Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives - Municipalities and urban developmenthttps://www.policyalternatives.ca/taxonomy/term/38
enCanada after the "Great Lockdown"https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/canada-after-great-lockdown
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<div class="field-label">Author(s):&nbsp;</div>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/authors/stuart-trew">Stuart Trew</a></div>
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<div class="field field-name-field-release-date field-type-datetime field-label-hidden">
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<div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">May 1, 2020</span></div>
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<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden">
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<div class="field-item even"><p style="text-align: right;"><img src="/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/The_Monitor/Screen%20Shot%202020-04-16%20at%2012.07.01%20PM.png" alt="Closed sign - due to Covid-19" width="2054" height="1322" /><sup>Photo by Elvert Barnes (Flickr Creative Commons)</sup></p>
<p>On April 2, the North American hardware and lumber store Lowes announced it was raising wages for all its workers by $2 an hour for the month of April only—a way, said CEO Marvin Ellison, to thank them for their “heroic actions in serving the needs of our communities.” Canadian companies, including several grocery chains and meat processors, made similar gestures to their workers in March, in response to <a href="https://gounion.ca/news/cargill-responds-to-our-call-with-pay-increases-and-bonus/" target="_blank">substantial pressure from their unions</a> for danger pay and better workplace protections.</p>
<p>News coverage played up the largesse and foresight of these CEOs, but let’s be realistic. Full-time workers will see at most an extra $350 a month from the raise. That’s a pittance, when you think about it, for people who are literally putting their lives on the line. Contrast this with the $800,000 in <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-canadian-pacific-executives-got-worker-safety-bonuses-in-a-year-when/" target="_blank">“safety bonuses”</a> paid to six CP executives in 2019, despite six employee deaths over the previous two years. </p>
<p>On April 8, Maple Leaf Foods shut down a chicken processing plant in Brampton, Ontario after three employees tested positive for COVID-19, followed shortly after by two more cases. On April 21 (after this issue of the Monitor had gone to the printers), Cargill <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/alberta/article-cargill-to-temporarily-close-meat-packing-plant-at-centre-of-alberta/" target="_blank">shut down Western Canada's main slaughterhouse</a> after nearly 500 people had contracted the virus. A week later, <a href="https://edmonton.citynews.ca/2020/04/27/two-new-deaths-216-confirmed-cases-of-covid-19/" target="_blank">1,100 cases had been linked to the plant</a>—the unfortunate and avoidable result of government deference to a gruesome industry where workers, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/29/millions-of-farm-animals-culled-as-us-food-supply-chain-chokes-up-coronavirus?CMP=share_btn_tw" target="_blank">like the animals they kill</a>, are seen as expendable.</p>
<p>The gross inadequacy of income and job security in essential or "frontline" (i.e., working class) sectors—<a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-covid-19-cases-long-term-care-staff-1.5545042" target="_blank">primary care</a>, <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Business/underlying-crisis-foodservice-workers-protest-lack-covid-19/story?id=70195869" target="_blank">food</a>, <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/6751796/hospitality-workers-hotels-hospitals-coronavirus/" target="_blank">hospitality</a>, cleaning, transportation and <a href="https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2020/04/coronavirus-transit-workers-strike-risk-subway-bus-drivers/609328/" target="_blank">mass transit</a>, etc.—is just one of the usually ignored features of capitalism that is underlined by the pandemic. The criminal neglect of people living in deregulated, largely privatized long-term care homes, which account for <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-long-term-care-connected-to-79-per-cent-of-covid-19-deaths-in-canada/" target="_blank">nearly 80%</a> of all COVID-19 deaths in Canada, is another, along with the disregard of health workers deprived of adequate medical gear due to lack of planning, <a href="http://behindthenumbers.ca/2020/04/16/getting-a-grip-on-essential-medical-supplies/" target="_blank">overreliance on global supply chains</a>, and years of cuts. </p>
<p>Topping it off is the sudden embarrassment of riches among most OECD governments. Federal debt in the U.S. is set to exceed GDP this year <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/finance/budget/492531-federal-debt-to-exceed-gdp-for-first-time-since-world-war-II-watchdog" target="_blank">for the first time since the Second World War</a>. Fiscally prudent Germany, which obstructed a fair bailout for Greece five years ago and continued, with the Netherlands, into late April <a href="https://uk.news.yahoo.com/eu-gridlocked-over-1-trillion-145412551.html?guccounter=1&amp;guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&amp;guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAIOzazp5kp6UvAloefSo7M8I4AECPQnOgX9xyc4pt3_VBZBMCBd4nn2QjeHjEidGgjTc4fDgIHr2OAD4uICWl0ue0PPA4RGxU6ZJ5OqFkQfq4izKzQZZAJ0GIHD6SZQFuhxTKngkFo6Ocrqa7JzsmzEnHFWVtlMOAJxfWTwZKcgA" target="_blank">to resist EU-wide plans to pay for desperately needed national recoveries with eurobonds</a>, promised unlimited cash (an “economic bazooka”) to support its own struggling businesses through the crisis. </p>
<p>In Canada, the Trudeau government is projected to spend about $150 billion and counting on direct support for individuals, corporations and small businesses. Where did all the money come from? <a href="http://behindthenumbers.ca/2020/04/08/canada-joins-the-qe-club-what-is-quantitative-easing-and-what-comes-next/" target="_blank">Deficit spending and quantitative easing</a> by the Bank of Canada, of course. Measures that were supposed to be unthinkable, or so we have been told (forever it seems), to justify public belt-tightening amidst private excess. In 2008, we bailed out the banks and auto sector, but left much of the rest of our unequal system intact. In 2020, that’s not going to be a viable option.</p>
<p>The rapidly designed and moderately generous (and, as the Monitor went to print, still growing) Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) was necessary to make sure the Canadian economy didn’t collapse during the lockdown. CCPA economist David Macdonald <a href="http://behindthenumbers.ca/2020/04/09/early-warning-covid19-labour-market-impacts/" target="_blank">estimates</a> that between February and March, 3.1 million workers (16% of the workforce) were laid off or saw big reductions in their hours. In mid-April we found out that nearly six million people—one in four Canadians aged 15 to 64—had either applied for the new CERB benefit or had their new employment insurance (EI) application streamed through it and were already getting cheques. </p>
<p>Not everyone who applies for the CERB will get to keep the money, but by including self-employed, temporary, seasonal and other more precarious workers, the benefit is an improvement on EI and should provide a baseline for a more responsive and fair employment insurance system for the future. The CCPA has welcomed these emergency measures and likely had some role in their development, as our economists and researchers were quoted regularly in the news on the gaps in our current EI system and inadequacy of the first version of the emergency benefit announced by the government in March.</p>
<p>The CERB has sparked a debate about a basic income level that should be guaranteed to Canadians in all circumstances, not just temporary unemployment. Provincial welfare and disability payments are cruelly low. They make Canada look like a backwater compared to many European countries. The CERB <a href="https://www.policynote.ca/income-assistance-relief/" target="_blank">provides more than double the income relief</a> of the most generous provincial income assistance program (in Newfoundland and Labrador). Yet the rent must be paid whether you are able to work or not. Surely with all the cheap money going around, the federal and <a href="http://behindthenumbers.ca/2020/04/24/comparing-provincial-economic-responses-to-covid-19/" target="_blank">provincial governments</a> can afford to go biggier.</p>
<p>A new permanet “dignity dividend,” or top-up to provincial income supports, as recommended in the 2020 Alternative Federal Budget, should be on the table. Some stimulus money should also go toward building and maintaining public and not-for-profit housing with rent geared to income, providing affordable shelter to those on modest incomes and creating what economists call an automatic stabilizer to weather future crises, as Natasha Bulowski <a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/our-opportunity-end-housing-poverty" target="_blank">discuses in our cover story</a> this issue. And while the wallet is open (and <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/business-52367052" target="_blank">the oil spigott shut</a>), why don’t we start paying oil workers to stay home as part of a just transition away from fossil fuels?</p>
<p>The IMF predicts Canada’s economy will shrink by 6.2% this year due to the “Great Lockdown.” The shock of the pandemic will be long-lasting and traumatic for many people. Even with some provinces beginning to ease restrictions, rolling self-quarantines and physical distancing are a possibility into 2021 and beyond. This is a new world with new demands, and a new acceptance of wartime-like government spending to meet them. We can do better than a $2 raise. A desirable recovery, for the millions of underpaid people doing essential work and those who will remain jobless for some time, depends on our doing much more.</p>
<hr />
<p><em>Stuart Trew is Senior Editor of the Monitor, the CCPA's bimonthly journal of progressive news, views and ideas. This editorial is updated from the version in the print edition, which includes out-of-date information about COVID-related deaths in meat plants and long-term care homes.</em></p>
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<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-2 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above">
<div class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</div>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/economy-and-economic-indicators">Economy and economic indicators</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/employment-and-labour">Employment and labour</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/government-finance">Government finance</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/health-health-care-system-pharmacare">Health, health care system, pharmacare</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/housing-and-homelessness">Housing and homelessness</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/inequality-and-poverty">Inequality and poverty</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/municipalities-and-urban-development">Municipalities and urban development</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/public-services-and-privatization">Public services and privatization</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/seniors-issues-and-pensions">Seniors issues and pensions</a></div>
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<div class="field-label">Offices:&nbsp;</div>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/offices/national">National Office</a></div>
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Thu, 16 Apr 2020 16:09:18 +0000Stuart Trew15186 at https://www.policyalternatives.caGig workers win the right to unionizehttps://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/gig-workers-win-right-unionize
<div class="field field-name-field-author-ref field-type-node-reference field-label-above">
<div class="field-label">Author(s):&nbsp;</div>
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/authors/fathima-cader">Fathima Cader</a></div>
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<div class="field field-name-field-release-date field-type-datetime field-label-hidden">
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<div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">May 1, 2020</span></div>
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<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden">
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<div class="field-item even"><p style="text-align: right;" dir="ltr"><img src="/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/Screen%20Shot%202020-04-16%20at%2010.46.24%20AM.png" alt="A pink-clad Foodora delivery biker on a snowy Vancouver street" width="1470" height="1040" /><sup>Photo by GoToVan (Flickr Creative Commons)</sup></p>
<p dir="ltr"><em>[Editor's note: Foodora, the Berlin-based food delivery app service, announced on April 27 that it is pulling out of Canada, citing "strong competition in the Canadian market." The courrier union Foodsters United responded on Facebook that the company's action "demonstrates a complete disregard for the wellbeing of us workers in an already extreme and uncertain time. Foodora has left restaurant partners, as well as couriers, without significant notice."]</em></p>
<p dir="ltr">Setting the stage for a potential transformation of the gig economy, Foodora couriers recently won the right to unionize. </p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>In February 2020, the Ontario Labour Relations Board dismissed the food delivery company’s arguments that its delivery couriers are independent contractors. Instead, the board ruled that the couriers are dependent contractors. This is a category of workers who are more like employees and who are allowed to unionize under Ontario’s Labour Relations Act. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>“The gig economy as a whole is a scam,” said Alex Kurth, Foodora courier and union organizer, in an interview with the CBC last August. “It's founded upon misclassification of workers in an attempt to shirk basic legal responsibilities and basic workers' rights.”</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Indeed, far from sharing the fruits of their labour in the so-called sharing economy, multibillion-dollar corporations like Amazon, Lyft and Uber have argued in courts and tribunals across the world that these workers are independent contractors, and thus not entitled to unionization, living wages, paid sick leave, discipline and termination protections, or unemployment insurance, among other rights and benefits. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>In the same CBC story, Foodora spokesperson Sadie Weinstein expressed the concern that unions “could be detrimental to most participants in the gig economy, including newcomers to Canada.” In fact, the above protections are essential for all gig workers, including and particularly low-waged immigrant workers forced into gig work precisely because of systemic barriers to other, more stable forms of employment.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>The labour board’s decision to agree with the Canadian Union of Postal Workers that Foodora couriers are dependent contractors was based on a number of interrelated considerations.</span></p>
<ol>
<li dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr"><span>Foodora’s app, which it owns and controls, is “the single most important part of the delivery process.” Couriers cannot licence or buy the software; they are only permitted to use it.</span></p>
</li>
</ol>
<ol start="2">
<li dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr"><span>Unlike independent contractors, couriers are not entrepreneurs. They can make more money only if they do more deliveries, whether for Foodora or another app. Analogously, “if a bartender wants to work at night because there are more tips, it would not influence the classification of the bartender as an employee.”</span></p>
</li>
</ol>
<ol start="3">
<li dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr"><span>Couriers have limited economic independence. The fact that many couriers had other sources of income, “reflects the common challenges faced by workers with multiple part-time jobs. The only difference is that couriers are on-call for work through sophisticated technology and utilize their downtime to work a second job.”</span></p>
</li>
</ol>
<ol start="4">
<li dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr"><span>Unlike independent contractors, couriers cannot control how much Foodora pays them.</span></p>
</li>
</ol>
<ol start="5">
<li dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr"><span>Couriers are heavily, if not entirely, integrated into Foodora’s business. Foodora’s revenue depends entirely on their reliable and timely services, while the couriers rely solely on Foodora’s App.</span></p>
</li>
</ol>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Foodora’s Toronto couriers had actually already voted on whether or not to join CUPW before the decision came out. But before their votes could be counted, the board first needed to decide if Ontario’s labour laws allow gig economy workers to cast unionization votes in the first place. The results of the Foodsters’ vote remain outstanding, now pending the board’s determination of other legal issues in dispute. If that vote ultimately proves successful, Foodora couriers could become Canada's first unionized app-based workforce. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Regardless, while this is the first decision from a Canadian labour board about how to classify gig workers, it likely won’t be the last. Since 2018, Amazon has been embroiled in a legal fight with Local 175 of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Canada about the unionization of its delivery drivers. UFCW Canada, meanwhile, is in the process of organizing Uber Black drivers, and workers at many other app-based workplaces continue to push for recognition as full employees. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Workers and employers at social media platform will be monitoring the repercussions of this case closely. A unionized workforce presents a curtailment on the ability of software companies to exploit vulnerable workers for corporate profit. This exploitation has become especially stark under COVID-19 quarantine.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Over the past two months, people have increasingly turned to food and grocery delivery couriers to avoid infection in crowded stores. Despite that potentially lifesaving function, couriers do not receive sick pay or even protective gear. Besides representing unfair workplace policy, this is also a clear public health failure. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>The gig economy is notorious for fracturing the traditional, physical workplace, where workers could naturally congregate, into a nebulous virtual sphere controlled by faceless algorithms. Against those isolationist odds, the Foodsters were nevertheless able to organize each other for what remains a long legal fight. They have been unflagging and have inspired workers at other companies, despite the fact gig economy workers are “dispersed, precarious, and sometimes short-tenured, and they are working in an industry where unions are demonized,” as Ryan White, one of CUPW’s lawyers in this case, noted on Twitter.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Against COVID-19’s shadow, we need to be prepared for at least some of our workplaces to grow even more fissured. With people increasingly physically isolated from each through social distancing directives, the organizing lessons we can learn from the Foodsters about how to build real-world solidarity and trust in an online age are arguably more important than ever.</span></p>
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<p><em>Fathima Cader is a lawyer, academic and writer, and was co-counsel on the unionization of delivery drivers servicing Amazon in Toronto.</em></p>
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<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-2 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above">
<div class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</div>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/economy-and-economic-indicators">Economy and economic indicators</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/employment-and-labour">Employment and labour</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/inequality-and-poverty">Inequality and poverty</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/law-and-legal-issues">Law and legal issues</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/municipalities-and-urban-development">Municipalities and urban development</a></div>
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Thu, 16 Apr 2020 14:50:29 +0000Stuart Trew15183 at https://www.policyalternatives.caOur opportunity to end housing povertyhttps://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/our-opportunity-end-housing-poverty
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<div class="field-item even">To fix Canada’s affordable housing crisis, we must take out the profit motive, say experts. Can the massive scale of the COVID-19 emergency response shake us out of complacency?</div>
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<div class="field field-name-field-author-ref field-type-node-reference field-label-above">
<div class="field-label">Author(s):&nbsp;</div>
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/authors/natasha-bulowski">Natasha Bulowski</a></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="field field-name-field-release-date field-type-datetime field-label-hidden">
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<div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">May 1, 2020</span></div>
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<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden">
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<div class="field-item even"><p style="text-align: right;"><img src="/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/Screen%20Shot%202020-04-15%20at%204.56.08%20PM.png" width="1718" height="1514" /><sup>Illustration by Maura Doyle</sup></p>
<p>Sometimes it takes one crisis to bring another into the light. </p>
<p>By the end of March, in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, all of Canada was in a state of emergency and self-quarantine. Thousands of businesses shut down, sending hundreds of thousands of workers home, with or without pay, indefinitely. In one week alone, a million people applied for employment insurance. Canadians with mortgages were struggling to secure deferred payments from the banks. And while some provinces had temporarily banned rental evictions, none had offered to pick up rent payments for those who had lost their income.</p>
<p>How were people supposed to live in these conditions for more than a few weeks? How were they going to afford their rent? A <a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/reports/rent-due-soon" target="_blank">CCPA report in March</a> by political economist Ricardo Tranjan found that of the 3.4 million households who depend on employment or self-employment income to pay their rent, more than 40% have less than one month’s worth of income saved. And of that group, nearly a quarter only have enough savings to last them a week in the event that they lose their income.</p>
<p>Tranjan’s report called on the federal government to provide immediate relief for low-income households through measures like increased rental subsidies, exempting unemployed low-income households from paying rent, or offering a goods and services tax supplement to low-income and unemployed renters. In the short term, these and other immediate actions would put money in the pockets of everyone struggling to pay the bills in a period of rising unemployment and prolonged quarantine. </p>
<p>But the sad truth is, Canada’s housing affordability crisis has been 30 years in the making. In a nation where housing needs drastically outstrip availability in most cities, and where the private sector is unwilling or unable to build more truly affordable units, could the COVID-19 pandemic offer a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to embrace new policies and new partnerships with the non-profit housing sector? Could we not use this moment to fix Canada’s housing crisis for good times and bad? </p>
<p align="center">***</p>
<p>In January, Ottawa became the first Canadian city to declare <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/6477415/ottawa-city-council-declares-housing-homelessness-emergency/" target="_blank">a housing and homelessness emergency</a>. In the past two years, average rental prices in the city have risen by 13.5% while vacancy rates are stuck around a relatively low 1.8%. (For comparison, Victoria and Halifax had vacancy rates of 1% in 2019 while in Calgary and Edmonton they were 3.7% and 4.9%.) An average-priced bachelor apartment now goes for $933 a month while provincial disability payments for shelter are stuck at $497 a month. The emergency motion, spearheaded by a group of five Ottawa city councillors, has put a spotlight on these numbers, but the situation it describes will be familiar to many other cities.</p>
<p>Nationally, between 2006 and 2016, the number of actually affordable units on the market (renting below $750 a month) declined by 830,000, according to data from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) <a href="https://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/en/data-and-research/publications-and-reports/rental-market-reports-major-centres" target="_blank">Rental Market Survey</a> and the 2011 National Household Survey. In a <a href="https://carleton.ca/cure/wp-content/uploads/CURE-Brief-Federal-Budget-2017.pdf" target="_blank">2017 paper,</a> Steve Pomeroy, a senior housing policy consultant, noted that new additions to Canada’s rental stock over that same period were typically priced at 140% of the average market rent and therefore did not contribute to the affordable housing supply.</p>
<p>Existing stock is also disappearing fast. Landlords use tactics like personal-use evictions, above-guideline rent increases, “renovictions” (where tenants are removed to upgrade a unit that becomes unaffordable to them when the renovation is finished), and will neglect to repair or maintain units to get rid of current tenants so they can relist the unit at a higher rent. These and other tactics help some landlords get around provincial rent increase guidelines, but they are not the primary driver of average rental price increases. There are simply not enough affordable rental units to go around. </p>
<table style="background-color: #e6fefd;" border="0">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<h2><strong>What is core housing need?</strong></h2>
<p>Core housing need happens when:</p>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: 1.5rem;">major repairs are required and residents don’t have the means to move to a good unit in their community;</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Gadget, sans-serif; font-size: 1.5rem;">there are not enough bedrooms for the residents, and they don’t have the means to move;</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Gadget, sans-serif; font-size: 1.5rem;">the current home costs more than the residents can afford, and they do not have the means to make a move or find an available affordable home in their community.</span></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Source:</strong> Understanding core housing need, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>A 2019 study by David Macdonald for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, titled <a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/unaccommodating" target="_blank"><em>Unaccommodating: Rental Wages in Canada</em></a>, put the affordability crisis into a context everyone can understand. Macdonald set out to determine the minimum hourly wage a person would have to make in order to comfortably afford to rent (using no more than 30% of their income) a one- or two-bedroom apartment in nearly 800 neighbourhoods within Canada’s major cities. The answer: $22.40 an hour for a two-bedroom apartment and just over $20 an hour for an average one-bedroom unit. </p>
<p>These “rental wages” are at least $5 an hour more than the highest provincial minimum wage in Canada ($15 in Alberta). In most Canadian cities, including Canada’s largest metropolitan areas of Toronto and Vancouver, Macdonald found there are no neighbourhoods where it is possible to afford a one- or two-bedroom unit on a single minimum wage, and even people earning much more than that will struggle to find a home they can afford. </p>
<p>Not only is there a woefully inadequate supply of affordable rental stock, but what little stock is available is eroding at alarming rates. CMHC data from 2011 and 2016 show that for every new affordable unit constructed in Ottawa, seven are lost to demolition, reconstruction or raised rents. Slowing and offsetting this erosion will be key to solving Ottawa’s housing affordability crisis and meeting recent federal targets, in the National Housing Strategy, for reducing chronic homelessness and renter housing needs by 50%. </p>
<p align="center"><strong>***</strong></p>
<p>As you might expect, these targets are easier to set than they are to meet, especially with existing affordable housing frameworks and plans at the local and provincial levels. That’s why Ottawa’s downtown city councillors went looking for new ideas as part of their housing emergency motion. </p>
<p>Based on his work at the Centre for Urban Research and Education, they commissioned Pomeroy to produce an <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5ae391a2f8370afbbe108185/t/5e41aa621be76d232ce702ed/1581361763933/Resetting+ten+year+plan+targets+and+actions++July+4.pdf" target="_blank">in-depth analysis of Ottawa’s 10-year housing and homelessness plan</a> and to suggest new targets and actions the City could take to get back on track. If there is an underlying message to Pomeroy’s study, it is that we cannot rely on the private sector to build all the affordable units we need.</p>
<p>“The private sector is not going to get us out of our housing emergency,” said Ottawa-Centre Councilor Catherine McKenney when I spoke to her in March. “When we talk about affordable housing, supportive housing, social housing, we can’t look at a profit margin. We have to look at a health, social service margin. We have to make sure people are well taken care of and once you put profit into that you will lose that.”</p>
<p>Not only must cities figure out ways to prevent the erosion of existing housing stock—“so that we aren’t losing that affordable stock as property owners and landlords renovate and push out tenants,” said McKenney—but also how to drastically increase the construction of new affordable rental units, preferably by public or non-profit actors and in combination with provincial and federal rental assistance programs, so that people can afford to pay for their homes. </p>
<p>Though Ottawa council is discussing new rental replacement policies and inclusionary zoning rules for affordable units (more on these below), the trick to achieving a more sustainable housing sector, according to Pomeroy, will be to make it easier for non-profits to compete with private developers. That could be done by encouraging and supporting (with financing) non-profit actors to bid on and win contracts to construct and manage mixed-income communities. </p>
<p>We can compare the breakeven rents—the rent needed to cover operating costs, mortgage payments and return on equity—of private builds versus non-profit builds to show why this makes sense. According to a 2019 study prepared by Coriolis Consulting, which outlines strategies for facilitating affordable rental construction in Vancouver, the breakeven rate on private one-bedrooms is between $600 and $1,000 more per unit, depending on the type of unit, than a similar unit built as a non-profit. And of course it would be: no profit, no extra costs to renters or the city.</p>
<p>However, as Pomeroy told me in March, for non-profits to build and maintain affordable housing, they need land, financing and rent supplements. He pointed to Vancouver’s Supportive Housing Strategy as an example of how it could work. In 2007, the City of Vancouver purchased one and leased 11 City-owned sites to non-profit housing sponsors for 60 years, at nominal prepaid rents, for the supply of supportive housing to people who require social supports, such as mental health care or substance abuse counselling, on site.</p>
<p>“That way,” Pomeroy said, “the City continues to own the land, but the non-profits get to lease it for a buck instead of paying full price.” </p>
<p>Once those sites were leased to the non-profits, Vancouver was able to set up a land trust and transfer those properties so they could be held in perpetuity as affordable housing. It is the land trust aspect of the Vancouver plan that McKenney said she will push in Ottawa, where the City has recently identified 18 parcels of land deemed suitable for mixed-income developments. </p>
<p>McKenney’s housing emergency motion is asking council to look at setting up a land trust to hold those lands for non-profit housing developers. But the discussions are moving slowly and there is a risk that private developers will purchase the lands before a trust can be established.</p>
<p>“We’ve seen it happen before where lands have been identified for non-profit and then have been sold by the City,” she told me. “There is absolutely no reason to think that it wouldn’t happen again.”</p>
<p>Building new developments on unused land is important for increasing affordable stock, but it is a very costly thing for non-profits to do. Building takes time and does not stop the erosion of existing affordable rental stock through raised rents. Helping non-profits acquire existing moderate-rent properties so the rents cannot be raised is one way to preserve existing affordable stock. </p>
<p>“What we can do is we can enable the non-profits to behave like private capital funds and real estate investment trusts,” Pomeroy said, suggesting that the way to do so is through an acquisition fund. </p>
<p>The problem is, current federal programs, through the <a href="https://www.placetocallhome.ca" target="_blank">National Housing Strategy</a>, aren’t configured to enable acquisition—they focus on creating new supply and retrofitting existing social housing. And even if these programs did fund acquisition, it takes time to access government funding. When existing properties come on the market, they can be sold within 30 days, making it easy for wealthy private developers to snap them up.</p>
<p>“It's very, very difficult for the non-profits to compete with that,” Pomeroy said. “We need to…create an intermediate step, some kind of an acquisition fund that could help the non-profits go and buy that property.”</p>
<p>Pomeroy is working on a concept called a revolving loan fund. It would encourage social impact investors and foundations to invest in a fund that would help provide the non-profit housing sector with the capital needed to buy properties. The City of Toronto simply used its own funds to help small non-profits buy existing rooming houses, but that money was given away as a grant.</p>
<p>“When you give it away as a grant, you can only spend it once,” said Pomeroy. “In a revolving loan fund, you can keep spending that money over and over again.”</p>
<p>With Pomeroy’s setup, when a building comes on the market, non-profits could then borrow from the revolving loan fund to supplement their bank loan, and in a few years the fund would get its money back with a modest return. That money could then be spent on another building, and the returns on that building then allow the acquisition of yet another property.</p>
<p>“For all the reasons we know now about the erosion issues and the commodification and the financialization of housing, giving the assets to private developers is not going to preserve affordability in the long run,” he said.</p>
<p align="center"><strong>***</strong></p>
<p>Though policies like inclusionary zoning and rent controlled for income incent private developers to include moderately lower-rent units (at or slightly below market rents) in their developments, these units are not actually affordable in most cases. Rental support subsidies and housing allowances for low-income renters can help bring costs down. But with an estimated 2.4 million Canadian households experiencing core housing need in 2020, according to Macdonald’s assessment, many middle-income households also struggle to find rentals for reasonable prices.</p>
<p>In Ottawa, for example, most new developments rent at up to 180% the market price. Non-profits provide much lower rent-geared-to-income housing. This leaves a gap in the intermediate housing market that could be filled by non-profits—as long as they can find a way to make it cost-effective. </p>
<p><img src="/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/Screen%20Shot%202020-04-15%20at%204.52.04%20PM.png" width="1470" height="836" /><sup><strong>Source: <em>The Rent is Due Soon: Financial Insecurity and COVID-19</em>, Ricardo Tranjan, CCPA, March 2020.</strong></sup></p>
<p>Building and maintaining affordable housing is incredibly difficult for non-profits because deeply affordable units don’t generate enough rent to operate very well, said Pomeroy. “You can’t get the funding to make the program work with 100% really-low-income-targeted [units].” </p>
<p>The way to get around this constraint is to incorporate some units at intermediate rents, from $1,400 to $1,500 a month. This ensures the non-profit builder is stronger financially and at the same time provides housing for middle-income individuals who exist within that intermediate gap—unable to afford 180% market rent, but not in need of deeply affordable housing.</p>
<p>There are considerable spinoff benefits to this model that make it more attractive than status quo inclusionary zoning. Having high- and low-income tenants living in the same community helps create a sense of interconnectedness and merges the worlds of people who typically live in very different neighbourhoods, for example. McKenney said this is especially beneficial for children because they all get exposed to the same opportunities—opportunities not always available in the more isolated Ottawa Community Housing neighbourhoods. “We all need to grow up together,” she said.</p>
<p>On top of the financial hurdles to a larger non-profit role in affordable housing management and creation, there are the bureaucratic barriers. Currently, as soon as a call for applications goes out, every non-profit in the city puts precious time and money into creating a proposal only to have it turned down because there are eight other organizations applying for the same project. For non-profits with limited staff and resources, $50,000 per application is a significant loss. </p>
<p>Pomeroy said a better system could involve asking for expressions of interest instead of putting out a full request for proposals to begin with. Interested groups could then be evaluated according to their ability to develop and manage the project, and then be put on a list for when opportunities arise. Eliminating this competition between non-profits not only saves them time, energy and money, but also helps ensure they are well-equipped to take on the development. </p>
<p align="center">***</p>
<p>For many housing experts, however, nonprofits are the second-best option, and under current funding conditions not a very good one at that. In early April I spoke to Shauna Mackinnon, associate professor and chair of urban and inner-city studies at the University of Winnipeg and former director of the CCPA-Manitoba, who told me public housing is the most effective way to provide deeply affordable housing to as many people as possible, but there is poor public perception of these programs. </p>
<p>“The public model has been far from perfect, but that’s not because its public—it’s because we’ve starved it,” she said. There have not been any significant new additions to public housing stock in decades and what little stock exists is often in poor repair and typically goes to people in most desperate need. This feeds into the notion of public housing as ghettos, she said. </p>
<p>“The only reason why people get ghettoized in public housing is because there’s not enough public housing. If we had more public housing you would have more variety of people, maybe with low income, but a greater variety of people, not just the most destitute with the most complex lives.”</p>
<p>Nonprofits providing deeply affordable rent-geared-to-income housing require a government subsidy to be able to provide that affordability and still cover their operating costs. For many non-profits these subsidies come from bilateral agreements involving the federal and provincial governments that were signed 35 to 50 years ago and are in many cases about to expire. </p>
<p>According to Sarah Cooper, assistant professor in the Department of City Planning at the University of Manitoba and a CCPA-Manitoba research associate, governments are in no mood today to renew those subsidies, based on a misplaced belief that with mortgages paid off, the nonprofits will be able to maintain the affordable housing on their own. In reality, without those government subsidies many nonprofits have to price some units at market rent or convert to mixed-income communities to make ends meet, which results in the loss of invaluable rent-geared-to-income units, Cooper told me. </p>
<p>Another, more fundamental problem with relying on nonprofits, according to MacKinnon, is their relative lack of transparency and accountability compared to government-run public housing. Nonprofits may or may not be democratically run; some will want to “honour the spirit of housing that is rent geared to income, but they may not, and they may not even actually have any choice because they need to survive as well, so without deep government subsidy they may need to set rents at the market rate.”</p>
<p>Seen from this perspective, the federal and provincial downloading of housing responsibilities to the nonprofit sector is a contributing factor to the affordable housing crisis, not a reality housing advocates need to grudgingly work within. “Their (governments) goal is to basically get it out of their hair and let somebody else deal with it,” MacKinnon said.</p>
<p align="center"><strong>***</strong></p>
<p>Shortly into the COVID-19 crisis, the federal government asked banks to provide some mortgage relief to struggling households; by April, more than 600,000 homeowners had filed applications. Meanwhile, rental relief has been mixed across the country. </p>
<p>Admittedly, homelessness and housing poverty is a more complex problem involving multiple levels of government. But as we throw away the standard policy playbook to deal with the coronavirus’ fallout, and find hundreds of billions of dollars to support struggling businesses and workers, has there ever been a better moment to come together, with some new and some old ideas, to fix Canada’s decades-long affordable housing crisis?</p>
<p>There are good options out there already that Ottawa and other cities can adopt, now and with federal and provincial support, to offset the erosion of affordable housing stock. According to Pomeroy, Ottawa is $22 million short (for 2020-21) of being able to meet its goal of reducing core housing need by 50% and eliminate chronic homelessness by 2024. That amount is an insignificant fraction of what the federal government has put aside so far in emergency benefits programs and tax deferrals. </p>
<p>“Less than 1% of all federal program expenditures are allocated to housing. And if housing is a basic human need, a basic necessity, a human right, then we should be putting more resources to addressing it,” said Pomeroy, adding that if everyone from big city mayors to advocacy groups collectively ran the same message, federal funding increases would follow.</p>
<p>“If anything positive can come from this it will be people understanding that we’re going to get out of this thing because of public investments, because the government is spending a tonne of money right now,” said MacKinnon. “That’s what we need people to start seeing, because its only public pressure that’s going to push us in a different direction…. The reality is we don’t have enough supply that’s low cost for people. And the best way to do that is through the public service.”</p>
<p>As the pandemic continues to unfold, more Canadians will see the disastrous effects of this long-term housing crisis firsthand. The federal government, working with the provinces, territories and municipalities, has a perfect opportunity to fund and prioritize affordable housing, so that future economic shocks are easier to absorb for everyone.</p>
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<p><em>Natasha Bulowski is apprenticing at the Monitor from Carleton University's School of Journalism and Communication, where she is completing a degree in journalism and human rights.</em></p>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/alternative-budgets">Alternative budgets</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/economy-and-economic-indicators">Economy and economic indicators</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/employment-and-labour">Employment and labour</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/government-finance">Government finance</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/health-health-care-system-pharmacare">Health, health care system, pharmacare</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/housing-and-homelessness">Housing and homelessness</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/indigenous-issues">Indigenous issues</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/inequality-and-poverty">Inequality and poverty</a></div>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/offices/national">National Office</a></div>
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Wed, 15 Apr 2020 20:49:51 +0000Stuart Trew15178 at https://www.policyalternatives.caThe Monitor, May/June 2020https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/monitor-mayjune-2020
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<div class="field-item even">Putting Housing Poverty on Notice</div>
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<div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">May 1, 2020</span></div>
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<a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/National%20Office/2020/05/CCPA%20Monitor%20May%20June%202020%20WEB.pdf" class="download button">Download</a><div class='meta'><span class="filesize">5.37 MB</span></div> </div>
<p>In our first issue following the outbreak of COVD-19 in Canada, Monitor contributors assess the federal and provincial government responses to date and propose how we might use this moment of government activism to fix the gross inequalities in our society—by improving social programs such as employment insurance, income assistance and our health care system, for example. </p>
<p>Our cover story centres Canada's decades-old housing affordability crisis, which will compound hardship for millions of people who are out of a job, or on drastically lower hours or pay, during the "Great Lockdown" of 2020. To find all of the CCPA's work on Canada's pandemic response, see our <a href="http://behindthenumbers.ca/category/covid19/" target="_blank">Behind the Numbers blog</a>.</p>
<p>Here's a sample of what you'll find in this issue.</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/canada-after-great-lockdown" target="_self">Canada after the "Great Lockdown"</a><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/us-style-ag-gag-laws-come-canada"> </a>— Monitor Editor <strong>Stuart Trew</strong> welcomes the return of activist government, but the money needs to keep flowing.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/our-opportunity-end-housing-poverty">An opportunity to end housing poverty</a> — <strong>Natasha Bulowski</strong> speaks to housing experts and city councillors about what it will take to make housing affordable and available to all.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/gig-workers-win-right-unionize">Gig workers win right to unionize in Ontario</a> — Lawyer<strong> Fathima</strong> <strong>Cader</strong> looks to the "<span>Foodsters" about how to build real-world solidarity and trust in an online age.</span></li>
<li><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/workers-edge-bangladesh">Bangladeshi workers on the edge</a> — <strong>Asad Ismi</strong> interviews Canadian and Bangladeshi labour unions on how their international solidarity efforts are affected by the pandemic.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/below-fold">When artificial intelligence becomes artificial intimacy</a> — <strong>Cynhtia Khoo</strong> unpacks the brave new world of online dating and therapy chatbots.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/policing-dissent-g20-wet’suwet’en-dispute">Policing dissent, from the Toronto G20 to the Wet'suwet'en conflict</a> — <strong>Paul Weinberg</strong> looks back on the the June 2010 mass arrests and asks what has changed, if anything, in how the RCMP polices activism. </li>
</ul>
<p>We can't do this without you! Please consider <a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/give" target="_blank">donating to the CCPA</a> and ask to get the <span>Monitor</span> delivered to your home or workplace.</p>
<p>Cover design by Maura Doyle.</p>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/children-and-youth">Children and youth</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/corporations-and-corporate-power">Corporations and corporate power</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/economy-and-economic-indicators">Economy and economic indicators</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/employment-and-labour">Employment and labour</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/gender-equality">Gender equality</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/government-finance">Government finance</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/health-health-care-system-pharmacare">Health, health care system, pharmacare</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/housing-and-homelessness">Housing and homelessness</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/indigenous-issues">Indigenous issues</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/inequality-and-poverty">Inequality and poverty</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/law-and-legal-issues">Law and legal issues</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/municipalities-and-urban-development">Municipalities and urban development</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/public-services-and-privatization">Public services and privatization</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/race-and-anti-racism">Race and anti-racism</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/seniors-issues-and-pensions">Seniors issues and pensions</a></div>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/offices/national">National Office</a></div>
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Wed, 15 Apr 2020 14:56:00 +0000Stuart Trew15176 at https://www.policyalternatives.caFast Facts: Crisis not the time to cut civic serviceshttps://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/commentary/fast-facts-crisis-not-time-cut-civic-services
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/authors/molly-mccracken">Molly McCracken</a></div>
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<div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">March 19, 2020</span></div>
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<div class="field-item even"><p><em><sup>First published in the Winnipeg Free Press March 19, 2020</sup></em></p>
<p>In response to COVID 19 school closures, Mayor and Council are rushing to vote on the City budget a week early, on March 20<sup>th</sup>. The budget is widely <a href="https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/non-profits-decry-citys-plan-to-cut-funding-568679142.html">decried by community groups</a> and given COVID 19 – vulnerable community members need more support - not less. The budget cuts are not necessary: Mayor Bowman and city council have a way out financially and politically.</p>
<p>The cuts include the elimination of the highly popular student U-Pass, cutting back 14 bus routes, reducing library hours, cutting leisure programs by 50%, a 10% cut to grants to community-based organizations, including Rossbrook House and IRCOM, a $493,000 cut from the Winnipeg Arts Council grant, and eliminating the public art program altogether. The budget also cuts important city services and eliminates municipal jobs including: cutting staff who do emergency water repairs, staff who answer 311 calls and closing the Waverley Fleet yards where city vehicles are repaired. </p>
<p>There is an alternative to each of these cuts. Brian Bowman’s 2018 campaign promise to cap property tax increases had a huge caveat: he would limit the increase to 2.33% as long as there were no further decreases in provincial transfers (Winnipeg <a href="https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/bowman-promises-to-stay-course-on-property-tax-493343111.html">Free Press, Sept. 14, 2019</a>). The province has frozen transfers to municipalities. Transfers from the province were $20 million less in 2018 and an estimated $38 million less in 2019.</p>
<p>Although this year’s provincial budget has yet to be released, we can assume that further cuts to municipalities will be included. The Mayor’s caveat opens up room for the Mayor and Council to make up the difference with property and business tax increases, alongside more progressive options like suburban parking lot levies as proposed in <a href="mailto:https://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/Manitoba%2520Office/2018/06/Alt%2520Municipal%2520Budget%25202018.pdf">Imagine a Winnipeg: the 2018 Alternative Municipal Budget</a>.</p>
<p>The 2018 Alternative Municipal Budget found cuts that year would have been unnecessary if Mayor and Council had been willing to bite the bullet and increase property taxes an additional 5 percentage points to 7.33%: a very reasonable increase of $12 per month for the average home (and modest, i.e. less than the cost of Netflix). Some sort of rebate program should be implemented to mediate the impact on low or fixed income households.</p>
<p>A similar move and a small increase to the business tax would cover the $30 million dollars needed to prevent this year’s cuts.</p>
<p>Instead, community groups, who are on the front lines of supporting vulnerable Winnipeggers dealing with COVID-19, will have City funding cut 10%, when it should be enhanced to deal with the crisis. And when COVID-19 concerns subside and City facilities open again, libraries will be closed on Sundays and leisure activities cut in half. How did we get to this dire situation?</p>
<p>Loren Remillard, Chair of the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce interprets the cuts as “an effort to prioritize "core services" in Winnipeg” (<a href="https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/non-profits-decry-citys-plan-to-cut-funding-568679142.html">Winnipeg Free Press March 10<sup>th, </sup>2019</a>). What exactly are core services?</p>
<p>The mission of the City of Winnipeg is to promote quality of life for all Winnipeggers and its purpose, as defined in provincial legislation is “…to develop and maintain safe, orderly, viable and sustainable communities; and to promote and maintain the health, safety, and welfare of the inhabitants”.</p>
<p>In contrast, Winnipeg is barely keeping up with the demands of a modern city and suffers from low transit ridership, crowded buses, persistent homelessness, reduced access to libraries and recreation, and reduced city services. COVID-19 will be incredibly challenging for the vulnerable and those of limited means. Winnipeg can and must do better. </p>
<p>When Brian Bowman was elected in 2013, he also campaigned on a property tax increase of 2.33%, dedicated solely to roads and rapid transit. So although the 16 year tax freeze maintained by Mayors Murray and Katz was finally thawed in 2013 (by Katz in his final year), civic departments have had to make do with below inflationary increases for over eight years. Bowman, former Chair of the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce, ran on this 2.33% platform again in 2018, alongside further reductions in business taxes.</p>
<p>In 2002, the business tax in Winnipeg was 9.75% of business rental property value and has since been lowered regularly. The 2020/21 tabled budget lowers it again to 4.48%. Eighteen years of business tax cuts represent a loss of over $17 million real dollars in revenue to the City annually today, according to University of Manitoba economist Ian Hudson. The reduction in business tax shifts the tax burden over to property taxes. And the limited 2.33% property tax increase dedicated to roads and rapid transit has created a structural deficit of the City’s own making.</p>
<p>Why are we lowering the business tax when the cost of doing business in Winnipeg is already competitive? Economic Development Winnipeg touts Winnipeg’s as the “lowest-cost location for select US and Canadian businesses” due to the low cost of living and a favourable business environment.</p>
<p>It is time to stop listening to the business lobby and start listening to those hurt by the cuts. Winnipeggers elected one of the most progressive City Councils in recent memory. A majority of Executive Policy Committee purport to be allies of low-income and working people and to hold progressive values. We need to push these councillors so they do not succumb to the lobbying of the Chamber about “core” services while business continues to benefit from the public services paid for by Winnipeggers’ property taxes.</p>
<p>Let us remind the Mayor about his election promise caveat and press for more revenue from property and business tax increases to avoid the devastating service cuts at challenging time in the City’s preliminary budget. Contact the Mayor and your council representative and get involved.</p>
<p>The final budget will be voted upon by City Council March 20th, 2020 at 9:30 am.</p>
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<li><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/Manitoba%20Office/2020/03/Crisis_not_time_to_cut_services.pdf" class="">Crisis_not_time_to_cut_services.pdf</a><div class='meta'><span class="filesize">375.27 KB</span></div></li>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/offices/manitoba">Manitoba Office</a></div>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/municipalities-and-urban-development">Municipalities and urban development</a></div>
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Thu, 19 Mar 2020 17:46:12 +0000Karen Schlichting15150 at https://www.policyalternatives.caEn pleine crise de la COVID-19, le Budget fédéral alternatif présente un plan global pour protéger le public, les travailleuses et travailleurs, les familles et les services essentiels https://www.policyalternatives.ca/newsroom/news-releases/en-pleine-crise-de-la-covid-19-le-budget-f%C3%A9d%C3%A9ral-alternatif-pr%C3%A9sente-un-plan
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<div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">March 17, 2020</span></div>
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<div class="field-item even"><p style="text-align: left;" align="center"><em style="font-size: 1.5rem;">Des experts et expertes réclament des mesures à court, à moyen et à long terme afin de soutenir les collectivités et de les protéger contre les effets de la pandémie </em></p>
<p style="text-align: left;"><strong>OTTAWA</strong>—En proie aux turbulences extrêmement volatiles provoquées par la COVID-19, la chute des prix du pétrole et l’effondrement des marchés financiers mondiaux, le Budget fédéral alternatif (BFA), publié aujourd’hui par le Centre canadien de politiques alternatives (CCPA), présente une feuille de route et un plan financier afin de protéger la santé publique, de soutenir les services publics essentiels et de contrer les inégalités qui exposent beaucoup de personnes à de plus grands risques. </p>
<p>« En adoptant les mesures recommandées dans le BFA, le Canada se placerait dans la meilleure position possible pour traverser la période d’incertitude qui s’annonce et protéger les travailleuses et travailleurs, les familles et les services publics essentiels, a dit David Macdonald, coordonnateur du Budget fédéral alternatif. Notre plan est ambitieux, mais il devrait être considéré comme une stricte base de référence, car des mesures plus audacieuses seront sans doute requises dans les semaines et les mois à venir ». </p>
<p>Le plan financier du BFA a été élaboré avant que la COVID-19 soit déclarée pandémique à l’échelle mondiale. Mais bon nombre des mesures proposées pourraient facilement servir de stratégies d’intervention à court, à moyen et à long terme en réponse à la crise. Il peut répondre aux besoins immédiats des travailleuses et travailleurs, permettre de renforcer la résilience et la capacité des programmes sociaux et répondre de manière satisfaisante aux besoins des communautés vulnérables. </p>
<p>Le BFA formule les recommandations suivantes (consultez le document en entier pour en savoir davantage) : </p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Court terme :</strong> faciliter l’accès à l’assurance-emploi (A.-E.) en réduisant le nombre d’heures pour être admissible au régime; créer un fonds d’A.-E. d’urgence pour couvrir les personnes qui sont malades, mais qui autrement ne sont pas admissibles (pigistes, travailleurs autonomes); bonifier les prestations pour tous, mais en particulier pour les travailleuses et travailleurs à faible revenu.</li>
<li><strong>Moyen terme :</strong> instaurer un nouveau transfert pour les familles à faible revenu de 1 800 dollars par adulte et enfant; bonifier les transferts aux aînés à faible revenu; étendre aux Canadiens à faible revenu qui se placent en auto-isolement la prestation du Canada pour le logement qui aide à payer le loyer; abolir les intérêts sur les prêts d’études.</li>
<li><strong>Long terme :</strong> bonifier les transferts fédéraux en matière de santé aux provinces et aux territoires afin de protéger les programmes sociaux contre les réductions de croissance du PIB (sans quoi le financement diminuera en 2020); mettre en œuvre une stratégie nationale de soins pour aînés en établissements de soins de longue durée, éliminer les échappatoires fiscales et renforcer la situation financière du Canada en imposant la richesse et les revenus extrêmes; créer une stratégie nationale de décarbonisation d’un milliard de dollars (sur 10 ans) et un transfert pour une transition équitable afin de recycler les travailleurs et les travailleuses du secteur de l’énergie fossile et ceux qui vivent dans des collectivités dépendantes des industries pétrolières et gazières.</li>
</ul>
<p>Les services de base et les enjeux globaux ont toujours été au cœur des priorités du BFA : de l’aide ciblée et des mesures de soutien pour les travailleurs et travailleuses, les familles, les collectivités et les secteurs qui en ont le plus besoin et un secteur public robuste avec de vastes programmes pour améliorer à l’échelle de la transformation sociale leur viabilité et leur équité. Le BFA s’attaque au travail précaire et faiblement rémunéré tout en respectant nos engagements en matière d’environnement, de réconciliation et d’élimination de la pauvreté. </p>
<p>« Le temps est venu de penser au-delà des solutions fiscales standards et du renflouement des banques. En cette période d’incertitude sans précédent, les prescriptions du BFA, c’est-à-dire renforcer la société et notre économie à court et à long terme, sont le remède qu’il faut », d’ajouter Sheila Block, économiste principale, bureau de l’Ontario du CCPA. </p>
<p>À propos du Budget fédéral alternatif : Le BFA, qui est dans sa 25<sup>e </sup>année d’existence, est le résultat d’une collaboration entre des économistes canadiens de renom et des expertes et experts de divers secteurs qui unissent leurs efforts pour présenter des orientations stratégiques progressistes et les moyens requis pour en supporter les coûts.</p>
<p>Le CCPA, fondé en 1980, est un institut de recherche et de bienfaisance indépendant à but non lucratif.</p>
<p align="center">-30-</p>
<p>Le <em>Budget fédéral alternatif 2020 : </em>on peut télécharger <em>Nouvelle décennie, nouveau pacte </em><a id="_anchor_2" name="_msoanchor_2" href="applewebdata://AA352BAC-4452-47BD-AEB1-5782D2253759#_msocom_2">[TJ2]</a> à <a href="http://www.policyalternatives.ca/">www.policyalternatives.ca</a>. Pour d’autres renseignements et des entrevues, communiquez avec : Alyssa O’Dell, agente des relations avec les médias et le public, CCPA, à 343-998-7575 ou <a href="mailto:media@policyalternatives.ca">media@policyalternatives.ca</a>.</p>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/agriculture">Agriculture</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/alternative-budgets">Alternative budgets</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/economy-and-economic-indicators">Economy and economic indicators</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/education">Education</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/employment-and-labour">Employment and labour</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/environment-and-sustainability">Environment and sustainability</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/gender-equality">Gender equality</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/government-finance">Government finance</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/health-health-care-system-pharmacare">Health, health care system, pharmacare</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/housing-and-homelessness">Housing and homelessness</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/indigenous-issues">Indigenous issues</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/inequality-and-poverty">Inequality and poverty</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/municipalities-and-urban-development">Municipalities and urban development</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/public-services-and-privatization">Public services and privatization</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/race-and-anti-racism">Race and anti-racism</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/seniors-issues-and-pensions">Seniors issues and pensions</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/taxes-and-tax-cuts">Taxes and tax cuts</a></div>
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<div class="field-label">Projects:&nbsp;</div>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/projects/alternative-federal-budget">Alternative Federal Budget</a></div>
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<div class="field-label">Offices:&nbsp;</div>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/offices/national">National Office</a></div>
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Tue, 17 Mar 2020 15:43:50 +0000Stuart Trew15146 at https://www.policyalternatives.caBudget fédéral alternatif 2020https://www.policyalternatives.ca/bfa2020
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<div class="field-item even">Un New Deal pour une nouvelle décennie</div>
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<div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">March 17, 2020</span></div>
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<a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/National%20Office/2020/03/AFB%202020%20FR.pdf" class="download button">Download</a><div class='meta'><span class="filesize">3.11 MB</span><span class="pages">130 pages</span></div> </div>
<p>Nous publions le Budget fédéral alternatif 2020 — notre 25e édition depuis 1995 — à un moment très instable pour le Canada et le monde. La combinaison de COVID-19, une vente mondiale de pétrole et l'effondrement des marchés financiers mondiaux menace non seulement la santé et la sécurité publiques, mais aussi la stabilité de notre économie, <span>qui sera probablement en récession d'ici la fin de l'année</span>. Il est maintenant temps de penser au-delà des correctifs fiscaux standard et des plans de sauvetage des banques. C'est le moment de la solidarité sociale, du leadership gouvernemental et d'une coopération opportune et non partisane pour faire tout ce qu'il faut pour protéger le public.</p>
<p>Chaque année, le BFA élabore un plan budgétaire pour assurer la santé, la sécurité et le bien-être du public, réduire la pauvreté et les inégalités de revenus et favoriser une plus grande inclusion. Cet BFA ne fait pas exception, bien que la réalité en rapide évolution de COVID-19 — et la nécessité de réponses fluides du gouvernement — signifie que les plans présentés dans cette feuille de route doivent être considérés comme une référence. Des mesures fiscales plus audacieuses seront très probablement nécessaires dans les semaines et les mois à venir.</p>
<p>Pourtant, l'adoption des mesures dans BFA 2020 marquerait un changement important dans l'élaboration des politiques gouvernementales et placerait l'économie canadienne sur des bases plus inclusives et durables. Il le ferait sans accroître considérablement la dette du Canada à un moment où la dette publique est vraiment le moindre de nos problèmes. En ce sens, le BFA est notre nouvel accord audacieux pour une nouvelle décennie incertaine. Nous espérons que ses idées inspireront l’action du gouvernement et encourageront l’imagination du public sur ce qu’il est possible de réaliser lorsque, pour reprendre les mots de Loxley, nous commençons à «établir un budget comme si les gens comptaient».</p>
<p><strong>Chaptires</strong></p>
<ul>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/un-plan-pour-protéger-les-travailleurs-et-le-public-dune-crise-sans-précédent" target="_blank">Préface - Un plan pour protéger les travailleurs et le public d'une crise sans précédent</a></span></span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1CBe7Rg5JO-OZdfd4RUDOZYCwsBWBo33h/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank">Agriculture et alimentation</a></span></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1Ck44_Oz8unlG82R1UZzFKRDM5JskwjJG/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank">Arts et culture</a></span></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1Chl9HvBPzj075o4kqwse-EbiUYRB7quW/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank">Assurance-emploi</a></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1CdaZ4TCWlnAqMk-9bLybK9ES0aaalY6p/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank">Le Canada et la Décennie internationale des personnes d’ascendance africaine</a></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1Cd3kR9a0iV5YoKQb41baX7FSBAbTDlzV/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank">Commerce international</a></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1CpkaJPP9zxH-TuQwuQEMM_lLCs2obnXs/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank">Développement international</a></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1Co1eOUxeMUfoDQycdadqpxRDx30tge3m/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank">Eau</a></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1D4uNBnib4yQl4VdGUjrqKpfha1s59IZU/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank">Égalité des genres</a></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1D4Qb9sLHEPY8L2rl3r4kk_t9LUwlYa1Y/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank">Égalité raciale</a></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1D-ZiHUZuIw1FHEPMHv0MnjFszb7zvV8k/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank">Enseignement postsecondaire et formation</a></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1CCNTilFSksvwYwC4YsWI1sS88ZJ90DMk/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank">Fiscalité équitable</a></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1CtigYuTpq9MUBzh0VbBIWhM6AmjJ5Z61/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank">Garde d’enfants</a></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1CpxYqSrtkBfsRvNIDxxUxK3iT6WE4i54/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank">Immigration</a></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1DnQGlTHeHRW1vY_1VCV-pQD9de7xOC1c/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank">Infrastructure et villes</a></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1DmUydAwTPorbj33ZA4FY1FhCD3AeDXPJ/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank">Les jeunes</a></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1DlzXWpgjfsX1s-jB-vKget9EqqSIufdW/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank">Logements abordables et itinérance</a></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1DdQLcsf3iHRJXluyobtUEc3wzkbRwieV/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank">Pauvreté</a></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1DUlFetdAoAtmJ8IZiBs1tlvi0yTnMlsM/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank">Personnes âgées et retraite</a></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1CCtOEzPlcIE8bRRD-cYO-drVoRo-8B34/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank">Projections économiques et budgétaires</a></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1DUcAaY67S1LmkycaOa34bifwI2vOWcP3/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank">Protection de l’environnement</a></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1DGWUAx2bbfAStYcsS6ZrGbkc-39FtEUS/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank">Sécurité alimentaire</a></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1DBXha5VBVDYx89_wuNmgkFqBeQf_3Vg6/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank">Services, infrastructure et gouvernance des Premières Nations</a></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1D9p-b_62vxcqJyrqn2F6RGUxVcERiU02/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank">Services publics et secteur public</a></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1D9ZBvtJQhwb4ddGeMQTM3mHjSSr2C3a3/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank">Soins de santé</a></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1Do1hG7XCf5aQU5sCzYjtNhE-HjJg6E9E/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank">Transition équitable et stratégie industrielle</a></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Apropos du Budget fédéral alternative</strong></p>
<p>Le Budget fédéral alternatif, qui en est à sa 25e édition, est une collaboration canadienne unique fondée sur les valeurs de la justice sociale, comme la dignité humaine et la liberté, l’équité, l’égalité, la solidarité, la durabilité de l’environnement et le bien public — et une forte croyance dans le pouvoir de la démocratie participative. Cette collaboration ne serait pas possible sans les généreuses contributions bénévoles des personnes suivantes, qui proviennent d’un ensemble diversifié de secteurs, de populations et de domaines d’expertise, y compris les domaines du travail, des peuples autochtones, de la protection de l’environnement, de la lutte contre la pauvreté, de la communauté confessionnelle, des étudiants, des enseignants, des travailleurs de l’éducation et de la santé, des arts et de la culture, du développement social, du développement de l’enfant, du développement international, de la condition féminine, et des droits de la personne.</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-1 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above">
<div class="field-label">Offices:&nbsp;</div>
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/offices/national">National Office</a></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-2 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above">
<div class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</div>
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/agriculture">Agriculture</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/alternative-budgets">Alternative budgets</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/children-and-youth">Children and youth</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/corporations-and-corporate-power">Corporations and corporate power</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/economy-and-economic-indicators">Economy and economic indicators</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/education">Education</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/employment-and-labour">Employment and labour</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/energy-policy">Energy policy</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/environment-and-sustainability">Environment and sustainability</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/gender-equality">Gender equality</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/government-finance">Government finance</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/health-health-care-system-pharmacare">Health, health care system, pharmacare</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/housing-and-homelessness">Housing and homelessness</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/human-rights">Human rights</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/indigenous-issues">Indigenous issues</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/inequality-and-poverty">Inequality and poverty</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/international-trade-and-investment-deep-integration">International trade and investment, deep integration</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/municipalities-and-urban-development">Municipalities and urban development</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/public-services-and-privatization">Public services and privatization</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/race-and-anti-racism">Race and anti-racism</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/seniors-issues-and-pensions">Seniors issues and pensions</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/taxes-and-tax-cuts">Taxes and tax cuts</a></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above">
<div class="field-label">Projects:&nbsp;</div>
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/projects/alternative-federal-budget">Alternative Federal Budget</a></div>
</div>
</div>
Tue, 17 Mar 2020 07:00:00 +0000Stuart Trew15142 at https://www.policyalternatives.caAlternative Federal Budget 2020https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/reports/alternative-federal-budget-2020
<div class="field field-name-field-secondary-title field-type-text field-label-hidden">
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even">New Decade, New Deal</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="field field-name-field-release-date field-type-datetime field-label-hidden">
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">March 17, 2020</span></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden">
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even"> <div class="top-download-button">
<a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/National%20Office/2020/03/AFB%202020.pdf" class="download button">Download</a><div class='meta'><span class="filesize">2.74 MB</span><span class="pages">118 pages</span></div> </div>
<p><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/bfa2020" target="_blank"><em>Cliquez ici pour le français</em></a></p>
<p>We release the 2020 Alternative Federal Budget—our 25<sup>th</sup> edition since 1995—at highly volatile moment for Canada and the world. The combination of COVID-19, a global oil sell-off, and the collapse of world financial markets threatens not only public health and safety, but also the stability of our economy, which will likely be in recession by the end of the year. Now is a time to think beyond the standard fiscal fixes and bank bailouts. It is a time for social solidarity, government leadership, and expedient, non-partisan co-operation to do everything it takes to protect the public. </p>
<p>Every year, the AFB maps out a fiscal plan to ensure public health, safety, and well-being, reduce poverty and income inequality and foster greater inclusion. This AFB is no exception, though the rapidly changing reality of COVID-19—and the necessity for fluid government responses—means the plans laid out in this road map should be considered a baseline. Bolder fiscal measures will most likely be required in the weeks and months to come. </p>
<p>Still, adopting the measures in AFB 2020 would mark an important shift in government policy-making and put the Canadian economy on more inclusive and sustainable foundations. It would do so without significantly adding to Canada’s debt at a time when public debt is truly the least of our problems. In that sense, the AFB is our bold new deal for an uncertain new decade. We hope its ideas will inspire government action and embolden the public imagination about what it is possible to achieve when, in Loxley’s words, we begin “budgeting as if people mattered.”</p>
<p><strong>AFB Chapters</strong></p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://behindthenumbers.ca/2020/03/17/afb2020-as-covid-19-policy-response-a-plan-to-protect-workers-and-the-public-from-an-unprecedented-crisis/" target="_blank">Preface - AFB2020 as COVID-19 policy response</a></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><a style="font-size: 1.5rem;" href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1BMH79sWqK1GJvAlhoJ_zl72KDm_omfp8/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank">Affordable housing and homelessness</a></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1BG8pr7gKq87guE54jMFTyc7VS-_UOqjC/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank"><span>Agriculture and food</span></a></span></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1BFpoM0PKROKdqWxWQg9x1q22nsQzQu7r/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank"><span>Arts and culture</span></a></span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1BCWadLAetMO4dBKi5NUTxBzdV0xBQhFp/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank"><span>Canada and the International Decade for People of African Descent</span></a></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1BA64aouhNQ3lZFYxDL4m4mdBPo94IHw-/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank"><span>Child care</span></a></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1AuDXNAn3ooWSZMzbdeTpbZdnMfmBkldW/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank"><span>Economic and fiscal projections</span></a></span></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1B8fDH0gRXUGt7yH88_JT2T46afdazCTD/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank"><span>Employment insurance</span></a></span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1B44kppB-QrJ_dUCbQTQJK2hW7OxBJNdd/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank"><span>Environmental protection</span></a></span></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1BNbZgG-bFYhQhZs8FKWtg_Jv8u5SOPax/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank"><span>Fair taxation</span></a></span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1BUOUoeM8zjr3ZnBUTbMoIDEEN23RkGug/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank"><span>Food security</span></a></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1BOH_vYzUPlDtdwc6IfWi0dc9jz-ZOekJ/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank"><span>Gender equality</span></a></span></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1BOAbJaNtohvH3QmrGjc0SxKnj6MjN7Zz/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank"><span>Health care</span></a></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1BVgoEpxbZYSi59NWvAd9xgcFKCtoZn0h/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank"><span>Immigration</span></a></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1Bfh6AtJnypjhXTvXVZ93Sr6Hyf9U8mVd/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank"><span>Infrastructure and cities</span></a></span></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1BdxyVZxyyxd3cova8cpGjo5pLhoaH-PS/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank"><span>International development</span></a></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1BZV-a_Q6hpF8S8vFPZbaNC_Y99ABY2Ia/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank"><span>International trade</span></a></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1Bjxqc6VqJ78yAio3LGaQbSgg5lrrXTCZ/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank"><span>Just transition and industrial strategy</span></a></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1BiMOJDABM8guTpX0ApgrmnImHetOgd0x/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank"><span>Older adults and retirement</span></a></span></span></li>
<li></li>
<li></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1Bk8NTZ7EVbASofy28tO1_LcVKk501jYs/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank"><span>Post-secondary education and training</span></a></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1C90Cfys_vM-qKUuXnp1QmtuKn9xQB4go/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank"><span>Poverty</span></a></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1C724xOqy9JlIGlO7jzwx6doAQn46xln9/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank"><span>Public services and the public sector</span></a></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1C6IZLxrxwWToXynWBduKhI7ECiX7Rdy8/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank"><span>Racial equality</span></a></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1C14Qmzw1lAvVONqwGV4vjnZKO-zKoTXO/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank"><span>Water</span></a></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/policyalternatives.ca/file/d/1Br8WiAdbNYu1PyabO_lXVFhii_gfuCfl/view?usp=drivesdk" target="_blank"><span>Youth</span></a></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
</ul>
<p><strong style="font-size: 1.5rem;">About the AFB</strong></p>
<p>The Alternative Federal Budget, now in its 25th year, is a unique Canadian collaboration rooted in social justice values—like human dignity and freedom, fairness, equality, solidarity, environmental sustainability and the public good—and a strong belief in the power of participatory democracy. This collaboration would not be possible without the generous contributions of the following people, who come from a variety of sectors, populations and areas of expertise including human rights, labour, environmental protection, anti-poverty, arts and culture, social development, child development, international development, women, Indigenous peoples, the faith-based community, students, teachers, education and health care workers.</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-1 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above">
<div class="field-label">Offices:&nbsp;</div>
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/offices/national">National Office</a></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-2 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above">
<div class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</div>
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/agriculture">Agriculture</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/alternative-budgets">Alternative budgets</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/children-and-youth">Children and youth</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/corporations-and-corporate-power">Corporations and corporate power</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/economy-and-economic-indicators">Economy and economic indicators</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/education">Education</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/employment-and-labour">Employment and labour</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/energy-policy">Energy policy</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/environment-and-sustainability">Environment and sustainability</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/gender-equality">Gender equality</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/government-finance">Government finance</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/health-health-care-system-pharmacare">Health, health care system, pharmacare</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/housing-and-homelessness">Housing and homelessness</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/human-rights">Human rights</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/indigenous-issues">Indigenous issues</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/inequality-and-poverty">Inequality and poverty</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/international-trade-and-investment-deep-integration">International trade and investment, deep integration</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/municipalities-and-urban-development">Municipalities and urban development</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/public-services-and-privatization">Public services and privatization</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/race-and-anti-racism">Race and anti-racism</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/seniors-issues-and-pensions">Seniors issues and pensions</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/taxes-and-tax-cuts">Taxes and tax cuts</a></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above">
<div class="field-label">Projects:&nbsp;</div>
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/projects/alternative-federal-budget">Alternative Federal Budget</a></div>
</div>
</div>
Tue, 17 Mar 2020 07:00:00 +0000Stuart Trew15141 at https://www.policyalternatives.caReview: Canada's long, proud history of public enterprisehttps://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/review-canadas-long-proud-history-public-enterprise
<div class="field field-name-field-author-ref field-type-node-reference field-label-above">
<div class="field-label">Author(s):&nbsp;</div>
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/authors/scott-sinclair">Scott Sinclair</a></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="field field-name-field-release-date field-type-datetime field-label-hidden">
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">March 2, 2020</span></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden">
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even"><p><img src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61ufqtZGH3L.jpg" alt="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61ufqtZGH3L.jpg" width="200" height="300" class="image-right" /><strong> The Sport and Prey of Capitalists: How the Rich Are Stealing Canada’s Public Wealth</strong><br /> Linda McQuaig<br /> Dundurn, August 2019, $28.99</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Linda McQuaig skilfully tells the compelling story of Canada’s rich and varied history of public enterprise. In the veteran journalist and prolific author’s hands, a vital, often forgotten element of Canadian history and national identity comes to life.</p>
<p>As it turns out, Canadians are rather good at public enterprise. McQuaig turns to historians such as H.V. Nelles to explain this. He argued this tradition was a response to our unique political economy, an assertion of independence from our huge southern neighbour, and a corrective to the narrow-minded conservatism of Canada’s business elites.</p>
<p>The book recounts the creation of public electricity in Ontario in the early 20<sup>th</sup> century; the development of insulin, vaccines and other life-saving medicines in publicly owned labs; the building of the Canadian National Railway, which in turn spurred the rise of public broadcasting; and the remarkable success and popularity of public banking in the post-Confederation period.</p>
<p>Recovering this historical memory is far from a purely academic exercise. McQuaig convincingly argues that public enterprise, which has been unremittingly disparaged and dismantled over the last half century, is the best option to rebuild Canada’s decaying infrastructure, meet social needs such as those of the unbanked, confront the impending climate emergency, and more.</p>
<p>The book revisits the regrettably thwarted efforts of Peter Lougheed, Trudeau the elder and, much later, former Newfoundland and Labrador premier Danny Williams to challenge control of the oil sector by foreign multinationals and win greater public benefits from this publicly owned resource. She contrasts the precarious state of public finances in free-enterprise Alberta with Norway, which pioneered a state-led approach and has amassed an impressive rainy-day fund for when the oil inevitably stops flowing.</p>
<p>By reclaiming the past, McQuaig illuminates the persisting advantages of public enterprise. Foremost among these are the ability to pursue the common good, and the capacity to think long-term and meet those needs (such as developing medicines for rare diseases) spurned or exploited by the private sector. Other advantages include not needing to turn a profit, the financial stability and attractive financing imparted by government backing, and, not least, the ability to attract talented innovators and dedicated workers motivated by the call to public service.</p>
<p>McQuaig stresses that the creation of public enterprise involved not only vision but political struggle. From publicly owned hydroelectricity to medicare, public enterprise has been fiercely resisted by entrenched commercial interests.</p>
<p>She also debunks the myths that under free-market capitalism the state simply sits on the sidelines as a neutral arbiter. The liberal state is interventionist, but typically to support its friends in the corporate sector.</p>
<p>For example, in an effort to staunch the rising tide of support for publicly owned electricity in Ontario, then­–premier George William Ross amended the Municipal Act to prevent local governments from competing with private utilities. His obstructionism led to him being thrown out of office in 1905, clearing the way for the province’s rapid electrification under public ownership.</p>
<p>Catchy slogans, like former Alberta premier Ralph Klein’s “get government out of the business of business,” mask a cozy and collaborative relationship between supposedly free-enterprise governments and the private sector. Public revenues are foregone or channelled in support of private profit. Public protections are weakened under the banner of reducing red tape.</p>
<p>Today, as McQuaig deftly explains, the Trudeau government has twisted the sensible idea of a public infrastructure bank into what amounts to a giant slush fund for its pals in the private sector, such as private equity mogul Larry Fink, whose BlackRock minions were even invited to help federal officials draw up plans for the bank.</p>
<p>Anyone who doubts the perils and pitfalls of the private-equity approach should read McQuaig’s chapter, “The worst deal of the century,” on Ontario’s Highway 407 privatization boondoggle. This deal has cost the Ontario public tens of billions of dollars in foregone revenues and left a vital provincial transportation artery under private, foreign control.</p>
<p>On the other hand, once they are established, public enterprises are typically so successful that they command strong support both from the public and even parts of the business community. That makes them hard to dislodge, even when facing strong corporate opposition.</p>
<p>In the face of climate change, rising inequality and populist disenchantment, the case for public enterprise is today as compelling as ever. McQuaig lays out an inspiring array of possibilities, including publicly researching and manufacturing medicines, creating a postal banking service, and manufacturing electric buses and vehicles by taking over Oshawa’s world class facility left idle by corporate outsourcing.</p>
<p>This is an important book. McQuaig makes a convincing case for the revitalization of public enterprise. By doing so, we can tap into our traditions, expose and outsmart elites clinging to their privileges, and unleash our inherent instincts to serve our communities and the public good.</p>
<hr />
<p><em>Scott Sinclair is Director of the CCPA's Trade and Investment Research Project.</em></p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-2 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above">
<div class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</div>
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/corporations-and-corporate-power">Corporations and corporate power</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/economy-and-economic-indicators">Economy and economic indicators</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/employment-and-labour">Employment and labour</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/health-health-care-system-pharmacare">Health, health care system, pharmacare</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/inequality-and-poverty">Inequality and poverty</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/municipalities-and-urban-development">Municipalities and urban development</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/public-services-and-privatization">Public services and privatization</a></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-1 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above">
<div class="field-label">Offices:&nbsp;</div>
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/offices/national">National Office</a></div>
</div>
</div>
Tue, 25 Feb 2020 18:58:10 +0000Stuart Trew15113 at https://www.policyalternatives.caAFB meet GNDhttps://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/afb-meet-gnd
<div class="field field-name-field-secondary-title field-type-text field-label-hidden">
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even">What role might the Alternative Federal Budget play in fleshing out the details of a Green New Deal for Canada?</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="field field-name-field-author-ref field-type-node-reference field-label-above">
<div class="field-label">Author(s):&nbsp;</div>
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/authors/stuart-trew">Stuart Trew</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/authors/hadrian-mertins-kirkwood">Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood</a></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="field field-name-field-release-date field-type-datetime field-label-hidden">
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">March 2, 2020</span></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden">
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even"><p style="text-align: right;"> <img src="/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/RTX78WSU.jpg" alt="Bernie Sanders at GND housing announcement" width="800" height="534" /><sup><strong>REUTERS/ERIN SCOTT</strong></sup></p>
<p>The idea of a Green New Deal—a radical and comprehensive transformation of the economy to cut greenhouse gas emissions while tackling inequality—has been gaining steam over the past few decades as an organizing principle for the environmental and social justice movements. But it wasn’t until 2019 that the GND exploded into the mainstream. Democrats in the U.S. Congress brought the idea to widespread public attention when they introduced a resolution on a Green New Deal last February. Although it never became law, the resolution galvanized U.S. activists and resonated around the world with its progressive rationale and blueprint for ambitious legislative action.</p>
<p>In Canada, the Pact for a Green New Deal, a large and growing citizens movement, brought together thousands of Canadians at more than 150 town halls across the country last year to explore a GND for Canada. Recommendations and next steps are expected in 2020. Most recently, Peter Julian of the federal New Democratic Party introduced a Green New Deal motion in Parliament. It is a concise and transformative legislative framework for a sustainable and inclusive Canadian economy.</p>
<p>What does a Green New Deal look like? Different advocates have advanced several visions, but the general principles are more or less the same in each:</p>
<ol>
<li>We face a climate crisis that requires rapid, global decarbonization, chiefly but not exclusively through the replacement of fossil fuels by cleaner energy sources.</li>
<li>We face an inequality crisis that requires massive redistribution of income and wealth, and the political power it buys, away from an entrenched elite and toward citizens.</li>
<li>Canada remains a colonial state that was built on and still facilitates the expropriation of Indigenous lands and livelihoods. Genuine reconciliation with Indigenous peoples will require the transformation of federal­–Indigenous relations in line with principles enshrined in the UN Declaration of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).</li>
<li>Any just transition to a more sustainable world must be accompanied by a hopeful, inspirational vision for the future that includes good jobs, vibrant communities, widespread social and economic well-being, and general good times all around.</li>
</ol>
<p>The details matter, of course, and there are many questions that GND advocates have yet to think through or agree on. For example, how can we produce enough electricity to rapidly replace all fossil fuels if we preclude new, large-scale hydro and nuclear projects in our communities? Where will we mine the environmentally harmful resources necessary to produce lower-emission technologies? Will new, green jobs be good, unionized jobs that are accessible in the places where jobs are needed most?</p>
<p>Furthermore, how will we pay for it all? Although inaction will be more expensive in the long term, the price tag of any Green New Deal in the short term is in the trillions of dollars for Canada alone. Even with unprecedented public spending, governments do not currently have the capacity to fund this transition in full, which means private capital needs to be incentivized or coerced into action.</p>
<p>The good news is we needn’t start from scratch. GND advocates, such as Naomi Klein, the U.K. economist Ann Pettifor, and a host of bright, young U.S. socialists including Kate Aronoff, Alyssa Battistoni, Thea Riofrancos and Daniel Aldana Cohen, among others, have laid out a number of workable answers, including many that are featured in the Alternative Federal Budget the CCPA co-ordinates each year with dozens of partner organizations and activists.</p>
<p>For example, both the AFB and GND crowd have called for cracking down on tax havens, tax loopholes and fossil fuel subsidies to help fund a transformative social and environmental agenda. Public banks, increased carbon taxation, green bonds and steeper deficit financing are other AFB mainstays that double as GND options for accelerating the just transition.</p>
<p>All these commonalities—in particular the GND’s insistence on democratizing our economies and using the climate emergency as a catalyst to rapidly roll-out new and enhanced, socially equalizing public services—got us seeing the Alternative Federal Budget, now in its 25<sup>th</sup> year, in a brand new light. Was the AFB a proto–Green New Deal in the making? Or, more proactively, can we make use of alternative budgeting to develop the detailed fiscal plan that will make the GND a reality in Canada?</p>
<p align="center">***</p>
<p>Twenty-five years ago, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives joined forces with the Winnipeg-based Cho!ces coalition to draft the first Alternative Federal Budget (AFB). There were two main objectives to the exercise, according to John Loxley, an original co-ordinator of the AFB and first chairperson of Cho!ces. The first was to demonstrate that “there are, indeed, alternative approaches to economic and social policy.”</p>
<p>Budgets are not merely legers to be balanced by skilled fiscal technocrats; they reflect the values and ambitions of the people who put them together. At the dawn of a new decade, in which the actions of governments will decide whether we succeed or fail to confront the climate emergency, those choices have never felt more important.</p>
<p>A second, related goal of the AFB was to build popular support for progressive alternatives to government austerity and to show how they are fiscally achievable. This was especially important in the project’s early days.</p>
<p>An anti-deficit delirium had set in across Canada in the 1990s based on overblown fears about the country’s debt and a one-sided debate about how to reduce it. Then finance minister Paul Martin’s insistence on cuts—to government services and programs, to provincial transfer payments, to public sector wages—as a way to shrink Canada’s debt-to-GDP ratio was, we argued, a choice, not an inevitability. To prove it, the 1995 Alternative Federal Budget modelled a scenario where the deficit was reduced to 3% of GDP (the government’s own target that year) while social spending was maintained or increased in some areas.</p>
<p>Much has changed in Canada since those days, some of it for the better. Canadians are less inclined today to believe political rhetoric about the alleged menace posed by government deficits, for example. Many analysts suggested the Liberal victory in the 2015 election may have been attributable, at least in part, to Trudeau’s promise to run deficits to pay for his party’s “Real Change” platform. Although the NDP was calling for many fair tax reforms advocated by the AFB, which would have allowed the government to redistribute Canada’s wealth toward sustainable job growth, the party’s determination to appear “fiscally conservative” backfired. The Canadian public was apparently willing to incur relatively higher deficits if it meant bigger spending on social services and infrastructure.</p>
<p>Circumstances, and priorities, have also changed in more fundamental ways since the deficit-slashing 1990s. The Mulroney government had been a key player in the development of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). But it and subsequent governments ignored commitments to bring greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions down to 1990 levels by the year 2000. Then starting around that year, consecutive governments actively supported (with subsidies and other measures) a rapid expansion of heavily polluting tar sands oil production and worked to undermine U.S. and European actions that might threaten this trajectory.<sup> <br /></sup></p>
<p>At a low point for Canadian politics, the Harper government likened Canadian climate justice activists and Indigenous communities who opposed new fossil fuel infrastructure to foreign-funded terrorists. The violent RCMP crackdown on Wet’suwet’en land defenders and their allies in early February, which included the suppression of press freedom, are a sign of how entrenched this dangerous and deluded attitude has become within the Canadian state.</p>
<p><img src="/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/Screen%20Shot%202020-02-24%20at%2012.58.40%20PM.png" width="814" height="913" /></p>
<p><strong><sup>Source: Statistics Canada Table 25-10-0014-01, Crude oil and equivalent, monthly supply and disposition (x 1,000).</sup></strong></p>
<p>Global inaction on climate change has resulted in a situation where, according to the IPCC, we now have less than a decade to cut GHG emissions in half, on a path to net zero emissions by 2050­, if we are to avoid the worst impacts of the climate emergency. Considering the herculean effort entailed in decarbonizing the Canadian economy, the days of humdrum, fiscally balanced budgets may need to be put behind us indefinitely.</p>
<p>And contrary to the popular narrative in Canada, we are not the reckless first movers, sticking out our necks while the rest of the world clings to the status quo. Across the globe, governments and political movements are raising their climate ambitions. The European Commission recently unveiled a trillion-euro investment plan to decarbonize the European Union by 2050. New Zealand and others have committed to phasing out fossil fuel production entirely. In the United States, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has proposed spending US$16.3 trillion (84% of GDP) on a Green New Deal to reach 100% renewable energy for electricity and transportation by 2030 and full decarbonization by the 2050 target.</p>
<p align="center">***</p>
<p>Given the scale of today’s challenges, it is extremely disappointing that our government still manages its revenues and spending much the same as it did when we launched our first AFB 25 years ago. Modest federal deficit spending aside, the assumptions driving budgetary decisions are locked in the past.</p>
<p>New revenues from economic growth have been used to cut taxes for businesses and wealthier Canadians when that money could have further enriched measures and programs to reduce inequality, eradicate poverty and meet the climate emergency head-on. The government’s first action in this post-election parliamentary session was to spend a further $6 billion a year on another “middle class tax cut” that leaves, at most, $15 a month in the pockets of people who will barely notice it.</p>
<p>There have been promising social investments since 2015—in housing, child care, arts and culture, and infrastructure, among other areas—and commitments to seeking equity for Indigenous, racialized, LGBTQ2S+, disabled and other historically marginalized communities. There have also been some steps taken to make Canada’s tax system fairer and more fiscally sustainable, such as the closure of income-splitting loopholes that mainly benefited Canada’s highest-income earners, and enhancements to the Canada Revenue Agency’s ability to go after corporate and high-wealth tax cheats. These and other measures, notably the Canada Child Benefit, have been mainstays of the AFB for years.</p>
<p>However, as long as this government holds firm to an ideological belief that incentivizing private sector–led growth and finding “market” solutions is <em>always</em> preferable to government-led progress, we will remain needlessly constrained in what we can do to create good, sustainable jobs and help the most vulnerable among us.</p>
<p>The federal carbon tax is a good thing, for example. But why is there no solid plan to use the revenues to fund sustainable, emissions-reducing public infrastructure (e.g., free public transit), or to help workers in the fossil fuel sector and their communities make a just transition to a decarbonized economy? Why is municipal access to the new $200 billion infrastructure bank contingent on private sector co-financiers making a 7–9% profit on their investment?</p>
<p>The reason is simple. A quarter-century of neoliberal dogma, much but not all of it enforced in binding international trade treaties, has succeeded in limiting both the imagination and real policy flexibility of decision-makers. Our governments are either encouraged or required to choose from an ever-narrowing array of acceptable fiscal and economic options that have, over the last three decades, increasingly privatized prosperity and socialized risk and debt.</p>
<p>By now most Canadians are familiar with the graph showing stagnating real (after inflation) wage growth alongside runaway income gains at the very top. If little has been done to lower greenhouse gas emissions (Argentina's Esperanza Antarctica station announced a record-breaking temperature of of 18.5 degrees Celsius on February 6—see photo), even less is going on to counter our age’s outrageous levels of inequality. A decade after the biggest financial crisis of our time, banks and tech giants are raking in record profits and, in many cases, avoiding paying any taxes at all. </p>
<p><strong><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EQGxRADW4AE9kQM?format=jpg&amp;name=large" alt="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EQGxRADW4AE9kQM?format=jpg&amp;name=large" width="200" class="image-right" /></strong></p>
<p>The current mood is now one of deep skepticism for the status quo, not just in Canada but across the globe. Parties who fail to respond are being voted out of office and chanted into submission by mass demonstrations (see the feature in this issue by James Clark).</p>
<p>The effectiveness of fake news may be as much a symptom of disenfranchisement as it is a statement of the power of new social media technologies; rising support for anti-immigrant populist messaging also cannot be disentangled from the widening social inequality of the neoliberal era. History shows us how quickly public dissatisfaction can turn to cynicism, and much worse, when enough people do not see their lives and priorities reflected in government actions.</p>
<p align="center">***</p>
<p>More than ever, the 2020 Alternative Federal Budget (out in March) is a blueprint for meaningful social engagement and positive change that both the federal governments and Green New Deal advocates would do well to consult. The ideas in its pages are good ones, the result of broad discussions between partner organizations with roots in frontline struggles for justice, equity and a just transition off fossil fuels.</p>
<p>“In creating these budgets,” explained Loxley in 2003, “activists learned about the possibilities and the limits of reform and gained greater credibility and confidence in agitating for social change and in opposing regressive government policies. This process of submitting policy ideas to a disciplined analysis in an open and socially inclusive forum represents a unique accomplishment.”</p>
<p>Following AFB tradition, our 2020 edition is not a “blue sky” wish-list for the government in power. The plan incorporates the government’s own economic growth and deficit forecasts so that we can show what more is possible even given the same constraints, whether or not they are real or self-imposed.</p>
<p>For example, where the Trudeau government has planned to run a $28-billion deficit this fiscal year, dropping to $18.5 billion by 2022-23, the AFB logs a slightly larger $42.5-billion deficit this year and a $20.5-billion deficit in 2022-23. We can do this while significantly expanding public spending by closing unfair tax loopholes, applying higher taxes to extreme personal and corporate wealth, and eliminating or diverting harmful spending such as the billions of dollars Canada spends annually on subsidies to the fossil fuel industry.</p>
<p>Still, at the end of the day, both the AFB and federal government maintain relatively low debt-to-GDP ratios of around 30% over the next three years. This conservative fiscal costing does not make the AFB plan any less ambitious, nor does it mean it can’t get us to where we need to be as envisioned in most Green New Deal scenarios.</p>
<p>In fact, according to our estimates, AFB 2020 would lift between 500,000 and 1.2 million people out of poverty (depending on how poverty is measured) in its first year and eliminate poverty outright within a decade. And it would substantially lower the cost of living for all but the wealthiest Canadians (see graph on this page). All this while restructuring the Canadian economy to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions through a National Decarbonization Strategy that includes a clear timeline for the phase out of most oil and gas extraction by 2040.</p>
<p>The AFB vastly expands the availability of affordable child care, creating a universal pharmacare program, increasing the supply of affordable and supportive housing, and expanding mental health care services and services specifically targeted to older people. AFB 2020 reforms employment insurance, the Guaranteed Income Supplement and old age security payments so they deliver more in benefits to more people. Post-secondary tuition fees are eliminated, while the Canada Child Benefit, immigration settlement services and other rights and benefits are extended to everyone regardless of their immigration or citizenship status.</p>
<p><img src="/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/Screen%20Shot%202020-02-24%20at%201.03.17%20PM.png" width="831" height="891" /></p>
<p>The AFB also pursues a just transition to a cleaner economy for those workers and communities most affected by ambitious climate policies, such as the phaseout of oil and gas production. We propose direct investment in hard hit communities to diversify the economy and create new jobs. The AFB also creates new funding to train new workers, especially those from historically excluded groups, for good jobs in the clean economy.</p>
<p>Canada’s history of colonialism and the state’s role in the genocide of First Peoples, its economic links to the North Atlantic slave trade, and more recent examples of state-sanctioned discrimination leave a long shadow. Official apologies alone are not enough. In addition to targeted social programs, better data collection on how racialized groups from all backgrounds—Black and African-diaspora Canadians, Indigenous peoples, new immigrants, etc.—are faring, as repeatedly called for in the AFB, can help us target and remove structural racism from our political and economic institutions.</p>
<p>Providing a transformative vision for the future that both acknowledges and challenges current political and economic conditions is especially important as the political salience of the Green New Deal grows. As the climate crisis deepens and the demand for alternatives swells, we can only expect the GND to attract more and more serious attention in the coming years. Advocates need a clear and practical agenda to make the most of this opportunity without sacrificing either environmental or social prerogatives. The AFB can help in this respect. </p>
<p>Adopting all the AFB 2020 actions would mark an important shift in government policy-making and put the Canadian economy on more inclusive and sustainable foundations. It would do so without significantly adding to Canada’s debt at a time when public debt is truly the least of our problems.</p>
<p>In that sense, the AFB shares many of the same objectives of the growing Green New Deal movement in Canada. It is our bold new deal for an uncertain new decade. We hope its ideas will inspire government action and embolden the public imagination about what it is possible to achieve when, in Loxley’s words, we begin “budgeting as if people mattered.”</p>
<hr />
<p><em>Stuart Trew is Senior Editor of the Monitor and Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood is Senior Researcher with the CCPA’s national office. </em></p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-2 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above">
<div class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</div>
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/alternative-budgets">Alternative budgets</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/corporations-and-corporate-power">Corporations and corporate power</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/economy-and-economic-indicators">Economy and economic indicators</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/employment-and-labour">Employment and labour</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/energy-policy">Energy policy</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/environment-and-sustainability">Environment and sustainability</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/gender-equality">Gender equality</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/government-finance">Government finance</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/health-health-care-system-pharmacare">Health, health care system, pharmacare</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/housing-and-homelessness">Housing and homelessness</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/human-rights">Human rights</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/indigenous-issues">Indigenous issues</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/inequality-and-poverty">Inequality and poverty</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/international-trade-and-investment-deep-integration">International trade and investment, deep integration</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/municipalities-and-urban-development">Municipalities and urban development</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/public-services-and-privatization">Public services and privatization</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/race-and-anti-racism">Race and anti-racism</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/seniors-issues-and-pensions">Seniors issues and pensions</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/taxes-and-tax-cuts">Taxes and tax cuts</a></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-1 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above">
<div class="field-label">Offices:&nbsp;</div>
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/offices/national">National Office</a></div>
</div>
</div>
Mon, 24 Feb 2020 18:05:04 +0000Stuart Trew15103 at https://www.policyalternatives.caThe Monitor, Mar/Apr 2020https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/monitor-marapr-2020
<div class="field field-name-field-secondary-title field-type-text field-label-hidden">
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even">Green New Deal, meet the Alternative Federal Budget</div>
</div>
</div>
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<div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">March 2, 2020</span></div>
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<p>The idea of a Green New Deal—a radical and comprehensive transformation of the economy to cut greenhouse gas emissions while tackling inequality—has been gaining steam as an organizing principle for the environmental and social justice movements. Yet there are many questions that GND advocates have yet to think through or agree on. Like how can we produce enough electricity to rapidly replace all fossil fuels? Will new, green jobs be good, unionized jobs that are accessible in the places where jobs are needed most? Crucially, how will we pay for it all?</p>
<p><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/afb-meet-gnd" target="_self">In our March/April 2020 cover feature</a>, <strong>Stuart Trew</strong> and <strong>Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood</strong> find a lot in common between the Green New Deal and the annual Alternative Federal Budget. Both have called for cracking down on tax havens, tax loopholes and fossil fuel subsidies to help fund a transformative social and environmental agenda, for example. Public banks, increased carbon taxation, green bonds and steeper deficit financing are other AFB mainstays that double as GND options for accelerating the just transition. Was the AFB a proto–Green New Deal in the making? Or, more proactively, can we make use of alternative budgeting to develop the detailed fiscal plan that will make the GND a reality in Canada?</p>
<p>Also in this issue:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/us-style-ag-gag-laws-come-canada">U.S.-style "ag-gag" laws come to Canada </a>— <strong>Camile Labchuk</strong> warns of the threats to civil and animal rights in provincial anti-farm-trespass laws.</li>
<li><a href="http://behindthenumbers.ca/2020/02/10/reflections-on-my-big-obama-moment/">Colour-coded Justice</a> — In his latest column, <strong>Anthony Morgan</strong> describes his exhilarating and disappointing "Big Obama Moment."</li>
<li><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/us-canada-side-fanatical-coup-regime-bolivia">Canada endorses fundamentalist coup in Bolivia</a> — <strong>Asad Ismi</strong>'s feature on the geopolitics of the West-backed coup.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/missing-links-disability-equality-canada">The missing link to disability equality</a> — <strong>John Rae</strong> lists five ways to get persons with disabilities off the sidelines of society.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/review-canadas-long-proud-history-public-enterprise">Canada's proud history of public enterprise</a> — <strong>Scott Sinclair</strong> reviews Linda McQuaig's timely new book, <em>The Sport and Prey of Capitalists</em>.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/provincial-progress-campaign-end-period-poverty-canada">Ending period poverty in Canada, one province at a time</a> — <strong>Arushana Suderaeson</strong> surveys provincial action to make menstrual products free and accessible.</li>
</ul>
<p>We can't do this without you! Please consider <a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/give" target="_blank">donating to the CCPA</a> and ask to get the <em>Monitor</em> delivered to your home or workplace.</p>
<p>Cover design by Tim Scarth.</p>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/agriculture">Agriculture</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/alternative-budgets">Alternative budgets</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/children-and-youth">Children and youth</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/corporations-and-corporate-power">Corporations and corporate power</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/economy-and-economic-indicators">Economy and economic indicators</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/education">Education</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/employment-and-labour">Employment and labour</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/energy-policy">Energy policy</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/environment-and-sustainability">Environment and sustainability</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/gender-equality">Gender equality</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/government-finance">Government finance</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/health-health-care-system-pharmacare">Health, health care system, pharmacare</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/housing-and-homelessness">Housing and homelessness</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/human-rights">Human rights</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/indigenous-issues">Indigenous issues</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/inequality-and-poverty">Inequality and poverty</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/international-trade-and-investment-deep-integration">International trade and investment, deep integration</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/law-and-legal-issues">Law and legal issues</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/municipalities-and-urban-development">Municipalities and urban development</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/public-services-and-privatization">Public services and privatization</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/race-and-anti-racism">Race and anti-racism</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/seniors-issues-and-pensions">Seniors issues and pensions</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/taxes-and-tax-cuts">Taxes and tax cuts</a></div>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/offices/national">National Office</a></div>
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Mon, 24 Feb 2020 17:54:22 +0000Stuart Trew15102 at https://www.policyalternatives.caThe future is in our hands—not theirshttps://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/future-our-hands%E2%80%94not-theirs
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<div class="field-item even"> The youth-led climate movement is intent on passing Green New Deal legislation this year despite organizing and political challenges.</div>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/authors/hannah-muhajarine">Hannah Muhajarine</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/authors/molly-mccracken">Molly McCracken</a></div>
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<div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">January 2, 2020</span></div>
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<div class="field-item even"><p style="text-align: right;"><img src="/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/IMG_5717.JPG" alt="Green New Deal protest outside Manitoba legislature" title="Green New Deal - Jan-Feb 2020" width="4032" height="3024" /><sup><strong>Our Time at the September 27 Global Climate Strike (photo by Laura Cameron)</strong> </sup></p>
<p>Hope for action on climate is in the hands of mass movements. Through the student climate strikes (Climate Strike Canada) and Our Time (for a Green New Deal), young climate activists are mobilizing people of all ages and pushing governments to legislate the large-scale response needed to get to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.</p>
<p>A minority Liberal government creates potential for bolder climate action with support from the NDP and Greens, while conservative-led provinces are bound to push back no matter what the federal government proposes. It’s incumbent on us, in this political moment, to reject half-measures and push for the most expansive and inclusive just transition possible.</p>
<p>It’s time for us to get behind what people around the world are calling a Green New Deal.</p>
<p>As a framework for climate legislation, the Green New Deal arose in response to the environmental wreckage and growing inequality that are a direct product of fossil-fuelled capitalism. The only way to meet our climate obligations is to transform our economy—not just away from fossil fuels, but also to be more equitable and inclusive.</p>
<p>The GND therefore combines financial help for transitioning energy workers with secure universal pensions for all, good quality housing, high-wage job creation, expanded public services (health care, child care, elder care and transit), restored public and natural spaces, and a new internationalism based on solidarity and true development. Absolutely central to the <em>Canadian</em> Green New Deal movement is decolonization and Indigenous rights.</p>
<p>“We will not achieve climate justice without Indigenous human rights. UNDRIP and the right to free and informed prior consent are central to our struggle,” says Leah Gazan, newly elected NDP MP for Winnipeg Centre, and one of Our Time’s Green New Deal champions.</p>
<p>The social policy piece of the GND is crucial for two reasons. First, making a job guarantee and expansion of public services part of our demands is how we build support for the mass movement we need to make this happen. Second, an economy centered on care work, along with sustainable food production, housing, and transportation, is what a low-carbon economy looks like.</p>
<p>The challenge will be convincing enough Canadians that dismantling fossil fuel capitalism is in the interests of all. Those whose futures are being stolen by inaction understand this clearly, which explains why they are leading the way toward a Green New Deal.</p>
<p><strong>Diversity of tactics</strong></p>
<p>The national youth-led movement Our Time emerged out of 350.org’s 2019 conference, <em>Powershift: Young and Rising</em>, and the Winnipeg Hub began organizing around a Green New Deal last spring. If the focus was on national politics and the election, it’s because only the federal government has the heft to bring in the sweeping measures—sometimes compared to an all-out war mobilization—needed to respond meaningfully to the climate emergency.</p>
<p>Many young people were and still are hesitant to engage in electoral organizing due to an erosion of faith in our democratic processes. Some have overcome this to do lobbying work with Our Time, while others choose to focus on education and community capacity-building, and planning local “Fridays for the Future” climate strikes. But as one activist explained, “we need everyone doing everything all the time.” With its diversity of tactics, the climate movement is attracting hundreds of people new to organizing or new to the climate action movement.</p>
<p>“There is tremendous potential here,” says David Camfield, professor of sociology and labour studies at the University of Manitoba and activist member of Manitoba Energy Justice Coalition (MEJC), a supporter of the Manitoba Youth for Climate Action’s September 27 Global Climate Strike in Winnipeg. “The climate strike drew in tonnes of people. Some have organizing skills and others are new to social movements. The challenge is to leaders to facilitate everyone finding a role to play.”</p>
<p>As reported recently in the <em>Monitor</em> (September/October 2019), Our Time held town halls last spring with the Pact for a Green New Deal and hosted the Leap tour in June. Organizers collected almost 50,000 signatures asking CBC to host a fall election leaders’ debate on the climate crisis and held over 30 rallies outside CBC headquarters in Winnipeg, Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver, Whitehorse, Yellowknife and other communities. CBC rejected the idea, saying the climate would be covered in the general all-candidates debate. On October 10, during the final debate of the election, the greatest emergency of our time got 21 minutes.</p>
<p>As the election drew nearer, Our Time hubs started meeting with candidates face to face to determine whether we could count on them to support a Green New Deal if elected. In Winnipeg, Our Time approached and then chose to endorse Leah Gazan, a fierce Indigenous rights advocate running for the NDP who became one of the faces of the national Our Time campaign.</p>
<p>“I was really honoured to be supported by the Our Time campaign and I’ve been pushing Our Time at every opportunity,” she says. “It’s important to recognize youth…are on the frontline of the climate emergency. They’ve asked for very reasonable things—healthy land, healthy food, clean water and clean air…. But [the Liberal government is] really focused on building a pipeline. Canada has one of the worst climate plans of all G7 countries. We are the least likely to meet climate targets.”</p>
<p>Of the 35 candidates endorsed by Our Time, eight (including Gazan) were elected: Niki Ashton for Churchill–Keewatinook Aski (MB), Daniel Blaikie for Elmwood–Transcona (MB), Alexandre Boulerice for Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie (QC), Don Davies for Vancouver–Kingsway (BC), Peter Julian for New Westminster–Burnaby (BC), Matthew Green for Hamilton Centre (ON), and Jenny Kwan for Vancouver East (BC).</p>
<p>On election night, Gazan announced: "Our campaign was a testament to the power of a grassroots political movement. It was fuelled by people. It was funded by people. I think it shows the power of people and how that is going to lead to change in this country.”</p>
<p><strong>After the election</strong></p>
<p>The first few weeks are critical for influencing the course of the new government. On October 28, Our Time organizers from Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal occupied the House of Commons to call for immediate climate action and a Green New Deal. Twenty-seven Our Time activists were arrested for this action, receiving tickets for trespassing and a one-month ban from Parliament Hill. Several MPs, including NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, later tweeted their support.</p>
<p>In the following days, we reached out to all 338 MPs to deliver a mandate letter calling for a public pledge to make a Green New Deal a top priority when the House resumes. When the <em>Monitor</em> went to print, 17 had accepted the pledge. New Westminster–Burnaby MP Peter Julian filed a GND private member’s bill in the House of Commons in December.</p>
<p>Separate from these political moves, non-governmental members organizations of the Pact for a Green New Deal will release their plan in early 2020. Importantly, it will be based on the priorities of the 150 communities visited during last year’s GND tour, and emphasize the needs of Indigenous, low-income, newcomer, racialized, and young people. The last thing we need is for the language and spirit of the Green New Deal to be co-opted to appease calls from the Alberta and Saskatchewan governments for more pipelines and corporate handouts for the fossil fuel industry.</p>
<p>“Jason Kenny had a “I love Oil and Gas” jersey on at the Grey Cup. People don’t love oil and gas, they love working, working themselves out of poverty, having a roof over their head,” says Gazan. “We need to change the rhetoric from an ‘oil and gas’ issue to ‘I need to have a job’ issue."</p>
<p><strong>What’s next</strong></p>
<p>The latest UN assessment gives us a mere decade to hold global temperature increases to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius. According to Camfield, the movement should prioritize finding a consensus on what climate justice means and how to achieve it in this urgent political context. “We need a strategy of escalation to exert power on the federal government for what’s needed,” he says.</p>
<p>Students continue to organize “Fridays for the Future” climate strikes. A strike in Winnipeg on November 29 included a round dance organized by Idle No More activists, as well as a clothing swap. A global follow-up to the millions-strong September 27 climate rally is planned for the spring.</p>
<p>Here in Winnipeg, Our Time and the CCPA-Manitoba recognize the need to build stronger relationships with the Indigenous community and beyond. We know that any struggle for a Green New Deal must take direction from those who are most dispossessed by fossil capitalism and most exposed to climate change. We do not wish to reproduce in our organizing spaces the undemocratic relationships of exploitation that have gotten us to this point. We need to unlearn the oppressive practices we frequently deploy, often unconsciously, even when our hearts are in the right place.</p>
<p>There is a lot of pressure to act <em>now</em>, but building relationships and trust takes time, as does learning new skills. With that in mind, several Our Time­–Winnipeg organizers recently participated in a direct action training session organized by the Indigenous youth–led Strawberry Heart Protectors and the Indigenous Peoples Power Project.</p>
<p>“We need the grassroots <em>and</em> electoral politics,” says Gazan. “Politicians say, ‘How are we going to get re-elected?’ It is by people, and we forget how powerful we are. People actually have identified common problems, common solutions. It’s how are we going to get there that sometimes differs. We can move it if we mobilize people and lift up people’s voices.”</p>
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<p><em>Hannah Muhajarine is an organizer with Our Time. Molly McCracken is Director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives–Manitoba.</em></p>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/children-and-youth">Children and youth</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/corporations-and-corporate-power">Corporations and corporate power</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/energy-policy">Energy policy</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/environment-and-sustainability">Environment and sustainability</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/human-rights">Human rights</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/indigenous-issues">Indigenous issues</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/inequality-and-poverty">Inequality and poverty</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/municipalities-and-urban-development">Municipalities and urban development</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/public-services-and-privatization">Public services and privatization</a></div>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/offices/national">National Office</a></div>
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Fri, 20 Dec 2019 16:19:23 +0000Stuart Trew15066 at https://www.policyalternatives.caThe Monitor, Jan/Feb 2020https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/monitor-janfeb-2020
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<p>The <em>Monitor</em> starts off 2020—the CCPA's 40th anniversary year—with a direct attack on the Trudeau government's contradictory climate plans and the close connections between public officials and the fossil fuel sector. Will minority status and a rising Green New Deal movement change the government's course, or will it be just more business as usual?</p>
<p>Also in this issue, we look at how changes to the "New NAFTA" negotiated by House Democrats will affect Canadians, what's behind the widening gap between CEO and average incomes in Canada, why Chilean citizens woke up to the crisis of inequality, and much more.</p>
<p>Finally, I'm very excited to announce that twice a year, starting with this issue, the <em>Monitor</em> will include a full issue of <em>Our Schools / Our Selves</em>, the voice of progressive education in Canada. The CCPA has been publishing OS/OS, under the editorship of Erika Shaker, since 2000. The journal is now free for all Monitor readers to enjoy.</p>
<p> Here's a sample of what you'll find in the issue.</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/it-still-business-usual">Is it still business as usual in Ottawa?</a> <strong>Martin Lukacs</strong> wonders how the "Trudeau Formula" will hold up in a minority setting.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/future-our-hands%E2%80%94not-theirs">The future of climate policy is in our hands</a>. <strong>Hannah Muhajarine</strong> and <strong>Molly McCraken</strong> on the next steps of the youth-led Green New Deal movement in Canada.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/when-will-canadians-have-right-repair">When will Canadians have the right to repair their digital products?</a> <strong>Sabrina Wilkinson</strong> scans the political momentum for legislative change.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/inequalitys-offspring">Inequality's offspring</a>: <strong>Edgardo Sepulveda</strong>'s graphical explanation for why Chile woke up.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/ccpa-40">The CCPA @ 40</a>: Monitor editor <strong>Stuart Trew</strong> on the centre's importance in an era of waning and mutating neoliberalism.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/stalemate-ecuador">Stalemate in Ecuador</a>: <strong>Asad Ismi</strong> reports on the mass protests that forced the Moreno government to back off austerity, for now.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/cheechako-sourdough">From Cheechako to Sourdough</a>: <strong>Paige Galette</strong>'s reflections on nortern living and surviving while being Black.</li>
</ul>
<p>We can't do this without you! Please consider <a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/give" target="_blank">donating to the CCPA</a> and ask to get the <em>Monitor</em> delivered to your home or workplace.</p>
<p>Thanks to <a href="https://www.remgeo.com/" target="_blank">Remie Geoffroi</a> for this issue's cover illustration.</p>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/agriculture">Agriculture</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/alternative-budgets">Alternative budgets</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/corporations-and-corporate-power">Corporations and corporate power</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/economy-and-economic-indicators">Economy and economic indicators</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/education">Education</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/employment-and-labour">Employment and labour</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/energy-policy">Energy policy</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/environment-and-sustainability">Environment and sustainability</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/federal-election">Federal election</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/gender-equality">Gender equality</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/government-finance">Government finance</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/human-rights">Human rights</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/indigenous-issues">Indigenous issues</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/inequality-and-poverty">Inequality and poverty</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/international-trade-and-investment-deep-integration">International trade and investment, deep integration</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/law-and-legal-issues">Law and legal issues</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/municipalities-and-urban-development">Municipalities and urban development</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/public-services-and-privatization">Public services and privatization</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/race-and-anti-racism">Race and anti-racism</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/taxes-and-tax-cuts">Taxes and tax cuts</a></div>
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<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-1 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above">
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/offices/national">National Office</a></div>
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Fri, 20 Dec 2019 15:35:44 +0000Stuart Trew15062 at https://www.policyalternatives.caTaking Stock of CETAhttps://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/reports/taking-stock-ceta
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/authors/scott-sinclair">Scott Sinclair</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/authors/stuart-trew">Stuart Trew</a></div>
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<div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">October 1, 2019</span></div>
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<a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/National%20Office/2019/10/Taking%20Stock%20of%20CETA.pdf" class="download button">Download</a><div class='meta'><span class="filesize">209.56 KB</span><span class="pages">22 pages</span></div> </div>
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</style><p><![endif]-->The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between Canada and the EU was provisionally implemented on September 21, 2017, but won’t come fully into force until all European member states choose to ratify the deal. A new report by CCPA trade researcher Scott Sinclair and <em>Monitor</em> editor Stuart Trew, written for Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (U.S. and Canada), assesses some of the agreement’s key early impacts on Canada. The report examines changes in bilateral trade patterns (including exports from small and medium-sized companies), continuing quantitative imbalances in Canada’s bilateral trade with Europe, and the composition of imports and exports. It then attempts an early assessment of how public procurement “liberalization” under CETA has affected public contracts, noting that a recent Via Rail contract could not favour Canadian-made Bombardier trains over a bid from Siemens due to new restrictions on “buy local” policies. Finally, the report briefly examines CETA’s impacts on access to affordable medicines within Canada, the agreement’s potential impacts on public services, and the implications of the regulatory co-operation processes instituted within CETA’s more than a dozen bilateral working groups.
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-1 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above">
<div class="field-label">Offices:&nbsp;</div>
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/offices/national">National Office</a></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-2 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above">
<div class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</div>
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/agriculture">Agriculture</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/corporations-and-corporate-power">Corporations and corporate power</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/economy-and-economic-indicators">Economy and economic indicators</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/employment-and-labour">Employment and labour</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/environment-and-sustainability">Environment and sustainability</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/health-health-care-system-pharmacare">Health, health care system, pharmacare</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/international-trade-and-investment-deep-integration">International trade and investment, deep integration</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/municipalities-and-urban-development">Municipalities and urban development</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/public-services-and-privatization">Public services and privatization</a></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above">
<div class="field-label">Projects:&nbsp;</div>
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/projects/trade-and-investment-research-project">Trade and Investment Research Project</a></div>
</div>
</div>
Thu, 17 Oct 2019 19:47:15 +0000Stuart Trew14999 at https://www.policyalternatives.caThe High Cost of Free-Riding and How We Fix Ithttps://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/reports/high-cost-free-riding-and-how-we-fix-it
<div class="field field-name-field-secondary-title field-type-text field-label-hidden">
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even">Examining the Implementation of Commuter Fees in Winnipeg</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="field field-name-field-author-ref field-type-node-reference field-label-above">
<div class="field-label">Author(s):&nbsp;</div>
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/authors/riley-black">Riley Black</a></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="field field-name-field-release-date field-type-datetime field-label-hidden">
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">October 11, 2019</span></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden">
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even"> <div class="top-download-button">
<a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/Manitoba%20Office/2019/10/The_high_cost_of_free_riding.pdf" class="download button">Download</a><div class='meta'><span class="filesize">3.47 MB</span><span class="pages">30 pages</span></div> </div>
<p>Every year, the City of Winnipeg's infrastructure deficit grows like the number of potholes that line the city's streets. At a time when the city is beset by provincial funding shortfalls, Winnipeg needs to consider alternative revenue sources to generate funding for its vital services. One such source is a 'commuter fee' -- a type of mobility pricing aimed at charging commuters who live outside the city while working inside it, and who therefore do not pay City of Winnipeg Property taxes.</p>
<p><em>Read full report for details regarding the 'commuter fee'. </em></p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-1 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above">
<div class="field-label">Offices:&nbsp;</div>
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/offices/manitoba">Manitoba Office</a></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-2 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above">
<div class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</div>
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/municipalities-and-urban-development">Municipalities and urban development</a></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="field field-name-field-isbn field-type-text field-label-inline clearfix">
<div class="field-label">ISBN:&nbsp;</div>
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even">978-1-77125-475-5</div>
</div>
</div>
Thu, 10 Oct 2019 21:28:40 +0000Karen Schlichting14972 at https://www.policyalternatives.caAn important tool in the inclusive growth toolkithttps://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/important-tool-inclusive-growth-toolkit
<div class="field field-name-field-secondary-title field-type-text field-label-hidden">
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even">How public procurement can spur economic development</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="field field-name-field-author-ref field-type-node-reference field-label-above">
<div class="field-label">Author(s):&nbsp;</div>
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/authors/declan-ingham">Declan Ingham</a></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="field field-name-field-release-date field-type-datetime field-label-hidden">
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">September 3, 2019</span></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden">
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even"><p style="text-align: right;"><img src="/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/Cleveland%20Model%20-%20Isometric%20City%20No%20Header%20100dpi-cropped.png" alt="Illustration of inclusive investment model in Cleveland" width="1110" height="702" /><sup><strong>Cleveland Model graphic taken from community-wealth.org.</strong></sup></p>
<p>A <a href="http://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/october-2017/what-shape-will-an-inclusive-growth-agenda-take-in-canada/">policy agenda of inclusive growth</a> has emerged from the failure of contemporary policy-makers to reconcile economic growth and social inclusion. Yet, the implications for municipal and urban policy-makers remain unclear. City leaders must meet the rising expectations of urbanized Canadians while facing a dearth of policy instruments at their disposal. Traditional “tax and spend” redistribution in an era of increased capital mobility is difficult; the municipal reliance on blunt revenue tools such as property taxes, user fees and provincial transfers only make it more so.</p>
<p>Yet to be a policy-maker at any level and not confront the glaring problems of <a href="http://www.broadbentinstitute.ca/the_return_of_the_gilded_age_consequences_causes_and_solutions">inequality</a>, <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2015/05/21/precarious-work-is-now-the-new-norm-united-way-report-says.html">growing precarity</a>, and financial and social <a href="https://torontosun.com/news/world/rise-of-populism-in-ontario-election-fuelled-by-economic-anxiety-pollster">distress</a> is to be politically negligent. In order to tackle the big policy issues of the day, the urban policy-maker needs to take an innovative approach that does not require significant new resources or new legislative powers.</p>
<p>Community wealth-building policies through public procurement may offer one simple solution. The English city of Preston and the U.S. city of Cleveland have made strides to transform this simple process of logistics into a socially conscious local industrial policy that activates and redirects economic flows toward underinvested communities, multiplying in the process the impact of already existing expenditures.</p>
<p><strong>Drivers and catalysts</strong></p>
<p>Both Cleveland, planted firmly in the U.S. Midwest, and Preston, nestled away in the United Kingdom’s North West, are rust belt cities. Their acute socioeconomic challenges are felt within the confines of deindustrialization, government austerity, declining revenue, limited private investment, and in the American case especially, pernicious racial inequality.</p>
<p>From 1950 to 2015, Cleveland <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/philadelphia-is-bouncing-back-from-problems-still-plaguing-cleveland/">shrunk by 58%</a>. Today the city boasts <a href="https://www.cleveland.com/datacentral/2016/09/cleveland_poverty_numbers_drop.html">some of the worst poverty in the country</a>, with rates 20% higher than <a href="https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2017/acs/acsbr16-01.pdf">the national average</a> of 14%. Similarly, Preston is in the bottom 20<sup>th</sup> percentile as the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/mar/29/indices-multiple-deprivation-poverty-england">45<sup>th</sup> most deprived local authority</a> in the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/english-indices-of-deprivation-2010">2010 U.K. Indices of Deprivation</a>. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/feb/14/poverty-was-entrenched-in-preston-so-we-became-more-self-sufficient">Some Preston neighbourhoods</a> record a life expectancy of 66 while in others it is 82. <a href="https://www.lep.co.uk/your-lancashire/preston/1-in-3-preston-children-living-below-the-breadline-1-8236240">One in three</a> children in the city are poor. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/apr/11/preston-cleveland-model-lessons-recovery-rust-belt">story of the “Cleveland Model</a>” begins in 2005 when the Cleveland Foundation’s new CEO began to conceive of a “<a href="https://democracycollaborative.org/sites/clone.community-wealth.org/files/downloads/ClevelandGreaterUniversityCircle-web.pdf">geography of collaboration</a>” between the “almost one-square mile of world class educational, cultural, and health institutions” in University Circle and the poorer neighbourhoods of the Greater University Circle. During the same time, a planned <a href="https://democracycollaborative.org/sites/clone.community-wealth.org/files/downloads/ClevelandGreaterUniversityCircle-web.pdf">$3 billion in capital projects</a> acted as a catalyst to convene the leading institutions of University Circle and address Cleveland’s reputational decline.</p>
<p>Preston’s history with local wealth-building starts in 2011, when a decades-long plan for a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/31/preston-hit-rock-bottom-took-back-control">£700m ($1.15 billion) redevelopment project</a> of the city centre <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-15571764">fell through</a>. The collapse of the megaproject left the city council without direction, and <a href="https://www.jrf.org.uk/sites/default/files/jrf/migrated/files/Summary-Final.pdf">the austerity of the 2010–15 U.K. coalition government</a> left them with little fiscal maneuverability (local authorities lost 27% of their spending power on average). This vacuum allowed Matthew Brown, a long-time outsider on city council, space to advocate for unorthodox policy deviations </p>
<p><strong>Anchor institutions and key actors </strong></p>
<p>Social procurement begins with the concept of anchor institutions. These are organizations of considerable scale (in terms of employment, spending or asset base) defined by their significant attachment to the communities they are rooted in. Anchor institutions are exempt from the basic assumptions of capital mobility and profit maximization. Instead they are fixed to specific locations and places as well as operating in a model not fixated on profit maximization.</p>
<p>In our Cleveland case, the Cleveland Foundation played the central role of co-ordinating the Greater University Circle Initiative (GUCI), which was anchored by the Cleveland Clinic, the University Hospital, the Case Western Reserve University, the City of Cleveland, the Democracy Collaborative, and other regional stakeholders. In Preston, city council with the Centre for Local Economic Strategies convened the anchor institutions. <a href="https://thenextsystem.org/the-preston-model">By August 2013, work had begun</a> to re-create the Cleveland Model, anchored by Preston City Council, the regional county council, the Lancashire police force, Preston’s largest social housing association, two colleges, and later the Lancashire Pension Fund.</p>
<p><strong>New ideas in Cleveland </strong></p>
<p>In Cleveland, work on a host of social procurement projects was formalized by an Economic Inclusion Management Committee to achieve four goals: Buy Local, Hire Local, Live Local, and Connect. Local expenditure was promoted through joint procurement by anchor institutions, and by working with partners to re-source formally outsourced goods and services.</p>
<p>One flagship program involved setting up a <a href="https://democracycollaborative.org/sites/clone.community-wealth.org/files/downloads/ClevelandGreaterUniversityCircle-web.pdf">worker co-operative network</a>, the Evergreen Cooperatives, to <a href="https://community-wealth.org/sites/clone.community-wealth.org/files/downloads/article-wang-filion.pdf">capture a portion</a> of the expected <a href="https://democracycollaborative.org/sites/clone.community-wealth.org/files/downloads/ClevelandGreaterUniversityCircle-web.pdf">$3 billion in procurement spending</a>. Cleveland firms were encouraged to adopt <a href="https://democracycollaborative.org/sites/clone.community-wealth.org/files/downloads/ClevelandGreaterUniversityCircle-web.pdf">voluntary community benefit agreements</a> with social objectives such as hiring local residents, and training programs were instituted to grow the skills base of local residents both for labour market entry and upskilling.</p>
<p>Initially, municipal policy-makers acted as early adopters, aiding the project by lending it legitimacy and credibility as a partner. But the City of Cleveland soon joined as an anchor, leveraging both its public funds (often to provide pilot funding) and its planning functions for zoning. The lesson from this experience is the need for buy-in at a senior level from a variety of core anchor institutions convened by a trusted and well-resourced organization. This commitment should spread out to the technical staff who begin to see social value not as a charitable effort but part of the core business function.</p>
<p><strong>From ink to action in Preston </strong></p>
<p>Preston councillor Matthew Brown set out explicitly to recreate a local version of the <a href="https://cles.org.uk/publications/community-wealth-building-through-anchor-institutions/">Cleveland Model</a>. Preston city council became accredited as a Living Wage Employer, identified key anchor institutions and worked to embed, within local executives, ideas of localism, community and social procurement. In short order, a common statement was drafted that committed these institutions to harnessing their procurement to greater social value and, crucially, to share their data.</p>
<p>Using this data, the <a href="https://thenextsystem.org/the-preston-model">Centre for Local Economic Strategies</a> analyzed each institution’s top 300 suppliers to understand the socio-geographic structure of their spending. If expenditure “leaked” out of the community it was scrutinized to determine if local firms could meet that need. Results showed that the anchors procured <a href="https://thenextsystem.org/the-preston-model">£750 million worth of goods and services a year ($1.23 billion), but only 5% of that spending took place in Preston and only 39% in the broader Lancashire</a> area. In response, The Preston Procurement Practitioners Group was established to allow experts in each institution to co-ordinate social procurement and share good practices.</p>
<p>A local business database helped prepare pre-procurement engagement, and procurement requests were soon broken down into smaller, more manageable contracts. <a href="https://cles.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Community-Wealth-Building-through-Anchor-Institutions_01_02_17.pdf">These shifts</a> had local carpenters manufacturing school furniture, new construction sites requiring greater numbers of local workers and apprentices, a local construction company building a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/31/preston-hit-rock-bottom-took-back-control">new market hall</a>, and the printing contracts of the police force and food contracts of the city council going to local firms. These small interventions increased local expenditure from <a href="https://cles.org.uk/the-preston-model/">5% to 18.2% over five years, putting <em>£70 million ($115 million) back into the Preston economy and £200 million ($327 million) back into the region—a 40% increase.</em> </a></p>
<p>Preston is continuing other initiatives to spur this economic innovation. A Social Value Procurement Framework is being developed to assess procurement as an economic activity contributing to social objectives. Local firms are encouraged to adopt the idea of “business citizenship,” which asks them to consider their contribution to the local economy as well as their social and environmental impacts. Lancashire’s pension funds are also being used to finance local development projects. Anchor institutions are discussing an Anchor Jobs Strategy to cultivate a worker co-operative network. These efforts have contributed to Preston being <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/nov/08/preston-named-best-city-live-work-north-west-england">named the best city to live and work</a> in North West England.</p>
<p><strong>Lessons and parting thoughts </strong></p>
<p>For aspiring urban leaders and policy-makers, there are simple lessons for duplicating this strategy of local development through collaboration and social procurement.</p>
<p>A leading institution must co-ordinate a partnership between anchor institutions to address the social and spatial disadvantages faced in the communities they are connected to. Once commitment has been established, a research institution should map the newly opened supply chain data of the anchor institutions to identify procurement expenditure. This review should consider the leakageof inefficient, corporate, low-social-impact or non-local expenditure and assess whether local firms could capture this influenceable spending.</p>
<p>This data should be leveraged to encourage the anchor institutions to shift their expenditures toward local or social enterprises so that public wealth flows back through the community. The <a href="https://ilsr.org/key-studies-why-local-matters/">Institute for Local Self-Reliance</a> highlights how local businesses recirculate a greater share of every dollar in the local economy. This shift should be attached to improving key social indicators and be continually monitored both to assess progress but also to continue building on behavioural change by the institutions, local firms, and the staff involved in procurement and human resources. </p>
<p>The problem of embedding increasingly stateless capital to a place with incumbent responsibilities and obligations is a massive policy undertaking. However, the success of social procurement is a reminder to policy-makers that there remains immense wealth in existing public institutions that can be re-invested for the social good. It may require re-examining existing economic arrangements, but if the inclusive growth policy agenda is going to truly reconcile economic policy with social gain, economic orthodoxy will need to be revisited.</p>
<p align="center">***</p>
<p><em>Declan Ingham is completing a master's degree in public policy at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on building a workers-first economy and a welfare state that leaves no one behind. The author gives thanks to the work done by Democracy Collaborative’s Walter Wright, Kathryn W. Hexter and Nick Downer for their report, </em>Cleveland’s Greater University Circle Initiative<em>, the Centre for Local Economic Strategies’ Matthew John and Neil McInroy for their report, </em>Community Wealth Building Through Anchor Institutions<em>, and The Next System Project’s piece on the Preston Model by Clifford Singer. </em></p>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/alternative-budgets">Alternative budgets</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/economy-and-economic-indicators">Economy and economic indicators</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/employment-and-labour">Employment and labour</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/government-finance">Government finance</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/inequality-and-poverty">Inequality and poverty</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/municipalities-and-urban-development">Municipalities and urban development</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/public-services-and-privatization">Public services and privatization</a></div>
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<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-1 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above">
<div class="field-label">Offices:&nbsp;</div>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/offices/national">National Office</a></div>
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Tue, 03 Sep 2019 14:21:58 +0000Stuart Trew14931 at https://www.policyalternatives.caThe Monitor, Sept/Oct 2019https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/monitor-septoct-2019
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<div class="field-item even">Election 2019: Thinking Bigger, Demanding Better</div>
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<div class="field field-name-field-release-date field-type-datetime field-label-hidden">
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<div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">September 3, 2019</span></div>
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<div class="field-item even"> <div class="top-download-button">
<a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/National%20Office/2019/09/CCPA%20Monitor%20Sept%20Oct%202019%20WEB.pdf" class="download button">Download</a><div class='meta'><span class="filesize">6.52 MB</span></div> </div>
<p>The pollster Nik Nanos claimed in June that climate change would be “one of the defining battle grounds” this election. “More important than jobs, more important than health care, more important than immigration.” In July, Abacus Data put climate change in third spot behind health care and cost of living, the latter an important issue (with the environment) for the two-thirds of voters from the millennial and gen-X cohorts. If the polls are right, and those public attitudes hold, parties may be judged not on their ability to <em>manage</em> the economy, but on their plans to <em>transform</em> it.</p>
<p>As we did in 2015, this special election issue of the Monitor presents some big, transformative ideas for democratizing, de-carbonizing and de-colonizing our economy, alongside expert assessments of the current government’s record and critical takedowns of right-wing propaganda—about immigration, equalization and deficits in particular—distracting voters from the real issues. As CCPA economist Sheila Block puts it, "a debate [this election] about who can spend less in government is the last thing we need.”</p>
<p>Here's a sample of what you'll find in the issue:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.policynote.ca/who-owns-it-the-democratic-socialist-debate-canada-should-be-having-this-election/" target="_blank">Own it! The democratic socialist debate we should be having this election</a>, by Alex Hemingway (also appears in the Policy Note blog).</li>
<li><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/election-2019-home-stretch-universal-public-pharmacare" target="_self">The home stretch for national pharmacare</a>, by Melanie Benard.</li>
<li><a href="http://behindthenumbers.ca/2019/09/05/border-guards-without-boundaries-why-cbsa-needs-a-watchdog/" target="_blank">Border guards without boundaries</a>: Tim McSorley on why we need a watchdog for the CBSA.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/election-2019-moving-beyond-%E2%80%9C-vote-or-not-vote%E2%80%9D" target="_self">Moving beyond "to vote or not to vote."</a> Ashley Courchene revisits the perennial debate about the Indigenous vote.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/election-2019-equalization-political-theatre" target="_self">Equalization as political theatre</a>, by Ricardo Acuña.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/election-2019-green-new-deal-canada" target="_self">A Green New Deal for Canada?</a> Molly McCracken interviews Avi Lewis about its radical potential.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/below-fold-trust-abhors-vacuum" target="_self">Fake news? Truth abhors a vacuum.</a> Cynthia Khoo asks why politicians blame everyone but themselves.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/election-2019-how-disarm-anti-immigration-rhetoric" target="_self">A math lesson on disarming anti-immigrant rhetoric</a>, by Ricardo Tranjan.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/election-2019-it%E2%80%99s-2015-all-over-again-or-2004" target="_self">It's 2015 all over again. Or is that 2004?</a> Richard Nimijean considers the parallels.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/election-2019-global-leader-abortion-rights-tolerates-barriers-home" target="_self">Why does Canada champion abortion rights abroad but tolerate poor access at home?</a> Sarah Kennell thinks we can do better.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/important-tool-inclusive-growth-toolkit" target="_self">How public procurement can spur inclusive economic development</a>, by Declan Ingham.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/colour-coded-justice-whats-black-lawyer-do" target="_self">What's a Black lawyer to do?</a> Anthony Morgan's new Monitor column, Colour-coded Justice.</li>
</ul>
<p>We can't do this without you! Please consider <a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/give" target="_blank">donating to the CCPA</a> to get the Monitor delivered to your home or workplace.</p>
<p>Cover illustration by <a href="https://amyalice.com/" target="_blank">Amy Thompson</a>.</p>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/agriculture">Agriculture</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/alternative-budgets">Alternative budgets</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/children-and-youth">Children and youth</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/corporations-and-corporate-power">Corporations and corporate power</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/economy-and-economic-indicators">Economy and economic indicators</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/employment-and-labour">Employment and labour</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/energy-policy">Energy policy</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/environment-and-sustainability">Environment and sustainability</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/federal-election">Federal election</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/gender-equality">Gender equality</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/government-finance">Government finance</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/health-health-care-system-pharmacare">Health, health care system, pharmacare</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/housing-and-homelessness">Housing and homelessness</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/human-rights">Human rights</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/indigenous-issues">Indigenous issues</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/inequality-and-poverty">Inequality and poverty</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/international-relations-peace-and-conflict">International relations, peace and conflict</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/international-trade-and-investment-deep-integration">International trade and investment, deep integration</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/law-and-legal-issues">Law and legal issues</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/media-media-analysis">Media, media analysis</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/municipalities-and-urban-development">Municipalities and urban development</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/public-services-and-privatization">Public services and privatization</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/race-and-anti-racism">Race and anti-racism</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/taxes-and-tax-cuts">Taxes and tax cuts</a></div>
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<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-1 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above">
<div class="field-label">Offices:&nbsp;</div>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/offices/national">National Office</a></div>
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Wed, 21 Aug 2019 19:34:02 +0000Stuart Trew14912 at https://www.policyalternatives.caSkyrocketing rent pushes modest apartments out of reach for lower-income Canadians in 97% of neighbourhoodshttps://www.policyalternatives.ca/newsroom/news-releases/study-maps-canada-rental-affordability-crisis
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<div class="field-item even">New study maps the rental affordability crisis in Canada’s cities</div>
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<div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">July 18, 2019</span></div>
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<div class="field-item even"><p>OTTAWA—In nearly every neighbourhood, in all parts of Canada, the hourly wage needed to afford an apartment rental is far above minimum wages and rising quickly, according to a new study released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA). </p>
<p>There are no neighbourhoods in Canada’s biggest cities (Greater Toronto Area and Metro Vancouver) where a full-time minimum wage worker could afford either a modest one- or two-bedroom apartment without spending more than 30% of their earnings, which is Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s income threshold for “Core Housing Need.” In Vancouver and the GTA, a minimum wage worker would have to work 112 or 96 hours a week, respectively, to afford a two-bedroom apartment—84 or 79 hours a week, respectively, for an average one bedroom.</p>
<p>The picture isn’t much better across all of Canada, where the average wage needed to afford a two-bedroom apartment is $22.40/h, or $20.20/h for an average one bedroom. It’s worth noting that rent is almost always higher for unoccupied apartments.</p>
<p>“When we talk about housing affordability the focus is usually on home ownership,” says study author and CCPA Senior Economist David Macdonald. “But a third of households, or 4.7 million families, rent. Many of these renters—particularly those working at or near minimum wage, on fixed incomes or single-income households—are at risk of being priced out of modest apartments no matter where they look.”</p>
<p>The new report, <a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/unaccommodating" target="_self"><em>Unaccommodating: Housing Rental Wage in Canada</em></a>, determines the hourly wage a full-time worker must make to be able to rent an average apartment, in 795 neighbourhoods across the country. Rental wage in each of Canada’s major cities can be found at the <a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/rentalwages" target="_blank">interactive website</a> that maps cost by neighbourhood from coast-to-coast. </p>
<p>There are only 24 of 795 neighbourhoods (3%) in Canada where a full-time minimum wage worker can afford to rent an average two-bedroom apartment, and in only 70 neighbourhoods (9%) can they afford a one bedroom. One in four Canadians earn within $3 of their province’s minimum wage.</p>
<p>Among the study’s findings: </p>
<ul type="disc">
<li>Of the 36 metro areas in Canada, 31 have <em>no neighbourhoods</em> where a two-bedroom apartment—the most common type—is affordable for a minimum wage worker;</li>
<li>Vancouver has the highest two-bedroom rental wages ($35.43/h), followed by Toronto ($33.70/h), Victoria ($28.47/h), Calgary ($26.97/h) and Ottawa ($26.08/h); </li>
<li>One of the most significant drivers of rental wage increases since the 1990s has been the drop in new purpose-built rental construction (apartments) in favour of condominium buildings; </li>
<li>New federal government spending on affordable housing is having an impact, but annual unit construction will remain insufficient and far below the pace set in the 1980s and 1990s.</li>
</ul>
<p>“Across the country, skyrocketing rents for decent apartments show no signs of falling. Building more dedicated affordable housing would increase vacancy rates, cool rental prices and better accommodate the many people shut out of Canada’s overheated housing market,” adds Macdonald. “Affordability for renters, not just home buyers, should be top of mind for all parties headed into the federal election. In a country as rich as Canada everyone deserves a reasonable place to live. In too many communities, this is just not the case.” </p>
<p align="center">-30-</p>
<p><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/unaccommodating" target="_self"><em>Unaccommodating: Rental Housing Wage in Canada</em></a> is available for download on the CCPA website. See the map online to explore rental housing wages in communities across Canada (for all CMHC data available). </p>
<p> For more information or interviews contact Alyssa O’Dell, CCPA Media and Public Relations Coordinator: 613-563-1341 x307, <a href="mailto:alyssa@policyalternatives.ca">alyssa@policyalternatives.ca</a> or cell 343-998-7575. </p>
<p> The CCPA is an independent, non-profit charitable research institute founded in 1980. </p>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/housing-and-homelessness">Housing and homelessness</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/municipalities-and-urban-development">Municipalities and urban development</a></div>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/offices/national">National Office</a></div>
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Wed, 17 Jul 2019 17:33:06 +0000Alyssa O'Dell14889 at https://www.policyalternatives.caThe Pallister government shifts into high gearhttps://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/pallister-government-shifts-high-gear
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<div class="field-item even">Explaining the transition from &quot;regressive&quot; incrementalism to more sweeping social, economic and energy policy reforms</div>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/authors/lynne-fernandez">Lynne Fernandez</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/authors/shauna-mackinnon">Shauna MacKinnon</a></div>
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<div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">July 1, 2019</span></div>
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<div class="field-item even"><p style="text-align: right;"><img src="/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/Screenshot%202019-05-31%2010.30.13.png" alt="Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister" width="1234" height="1034" /><strong><sup>Photo from the U.S. Department of Agriculture</sup></strong></p>
<p>Over 15 years in government (1999 to 2016), the Manitoba NDP made incremental changes to social and economic policy that moved the province in a more progressive direction. Many progressives say these changes did not go nearly far enough. In some areas, however, as a result of persistent pressure from civil society, the government engaged in “radical incrementalism,” described by American political scientist Sanford Schram as the undertaking of steady, incremental policy changes that lay a foundation for transformative change.</p>
<p>We propose that the current Progressive Conservative government led by Premier Brian Pallister initially engaged in a mirror-image version of this policy we call “regressive incrementalism.” The strategy—to gradually unravel promising changes made during the previous NDP government—is similar to that adopted by the conservative Filmon government of the 1990s. But Pallister has since proposed more sweeping reforms with the intention of permanently weakening labour and compromising future governments’ ability to use public services and Crown corporations to foster more equitable and sustainable economic development in the province.</p>
<p><strong>“Radical incrementalism” and progressive change</strong></p>
<p>Among the progressive policies put in place by the last NDP government to help equity-seeking groups were regular, above-inflation increases to minimum wage, investment in child care, a significant expansion of social housing, and Rent Assist, a program to help low income people access private-sector housing. While these incremental changes did not transform existing power structures, they did moderately shift the balance.</p>
<p>The NDP government strengthened public institutions such as Manitoba Hydro, which was mandated to act in creative ways to support social enterprises (and the training and employment of multi-barriered workers) while investing in alternative energy generation such as geothermal. In an example of larger-scale commitments, the government invested heavily in new hydro development with the goal of increasing exports and improving energy security. It used Manitoba Hydro as a way to implement project-based labour agreements that benefitted unionized and non-unionized workers. The utility also entered into agreements with First Nations for shared ownership of new hydro developments, and training and employment opportunities for First Nation workers.</p>
<p>The NDP government also supported Manitoba’s labour community with friendlier legislation. It invested in post-secondary access programs initially introduced (by another NDP government) in the 1980s to help multi-barriered students succeed in their university studies. The government significantly boosted support for inner-city revitalization through a popular Neighbourhoods Alive! initiative. In response to concerns raised by non-profit organizations working on the frontline with Manitoba’s most vulnerable, the NDP government signed multi-year funding agreements with more than 100 community-based organizations, making Manitoba the envy of similar groups across Canada.</p>
<p>In 2009, the Manitoba government released an important poverty reduction strategy, which it enshrined in law in 2011. Among its priorities, the Poverty Reduction Strategy Act required the government in each fiscal year to “take the poverty reduction and social inclusion strategy into account when preparing the budget for that fiscal year,” and to “prepare a statement that (i) summarizes a strategy and sets out the budget measures that are designed to implement the strategy, and (ii) sets out the poverty reduction and social inclusion indicators prescribed by regulation that will be used to measure the progress of the strategy.”</p>
<p><strong>Regressive incrementalism, then and now</strong></p>
<p>In 2016, Brian Pallister’s Progressive Conservatives unseated the NDP and began reversing the course of provincial policy in a process we call “regressive incrementalism.” The same process unfolded in the 1990s when the PC government of Gary Filmon dismantled programs and policies implemented by the NDP government that preceded it.</p>
<p>For example, the Filmon government gutted programs to help students access post-secondary education, starved public housing, implemented workfare policies and withdrew funding from 56 community-based organizations, leaving a gap in service for many vulnerable Manitobans. As result, many low-income individuals and communities went through difficult times in the 1990s. It has taken nearly two decades for new capacity to be built and for communities to begin to rebuild.</p>
<p>The Filmon government made other, irreversible changes such as the privatization of Manitoba Telephone System (MTS), now owned by Bell. In 1996, the government also attempted to privatize homecare services. That experiment failed for a number of reasons and homecare services were brought back into the public sector a year later. The subsequent NDP government was able to reverse course in many areas during its 15 years at the helm, but many of those gains are now being rolled back once again.</p>
<p>The Pallister government’s regressive strategy was immediately applied to the civil service and Crown corporations. First the government eliminated the card check system for union certification, forcing workers who want to organize into secret elections. Then the government introduced legislation to freeze public sector wages for two years, mandating a 0.75% wage increase for the third year and a 1% increase in year four. This legislation has been contested by the Manitoba Federation of Labour on the grounds that it violates a union’s right to collectively bargain on behalf of its members. The province has also forced health care unions to reduce the number of bargaining units, putting them in a long, disruptive process of jockeying for members. </p>
<p>As for the Crown corporations, in 2017, Manitoba Hydro, Manitoba Public Insurance and Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries Corporation were all ordered to trim personnel and reduce management by 15%. Manitoba Hydro eliminated 900 jobs and cut management staff by 30%. The main reason given for the cuts was that the province had to reduce its deficit, which was not nearly as serious as the government claimed. At the same time, the Pallister government is proceeding with its campaign promise to cut the PST by 1%. This will reduce provincial revenue by $325 million over the next fiscal year.</p>
<p>The looming loss in PST revenue coupled with the government’s fixation on the deficit has meant a steady stream of cuts since 2017. The province has held back funds for much needed infrastructure repairs, stopped investing in the expansion of social housing, cut funding to universities and school divisions, is decreasing social assistance benefits, and is scaling back Rent Assist. But the attack on the public sector is still escalating. The province has eliminated inexpensive but very effective programs such as Neighbourhoods Alive!, the previous government's flagship community revitalization initiative, and community-based organizations are worried their multi-year funding agreements with the government are not being renewed.</p>
<p>This April, Crown corporations received a letter from Minister Colleen Mayer reminding them that they “must align with our government’s mandate to fix our finances, repair our services and rebuild our economy,” and that “the old way of doing things, where government just got bigger and more expensive is over” (sic). The quickest way to shrink government and make it less expensive is to get rid of workers. The ministerial letter to Efficiency Manitoba, the new Crown corporation responsible for energy efficiency and conservation, was clear on this point: programming must improve, “but at a significantly smaller percentage of the costs and materially less labour costs” (sic).</p>
<p>Each Crown corporation is now expected to follow the province’s example of shrinking the civil service and reduce their workforce. This will result in a further 15% reduction in management positions and an 8% cut in regular staff. A May 2 <em>Winnipeg Free Press</em> story reports that Manitoba Hydro is hesitant to comply. The corporation’s Bruce Owens states, “We believe that further staff reductions would significantly increase the risk of public and employee safety, of system reliability, and as well our ability to provide reasonable levels of service to our customers.”</p>
<p><strong>From incrementalism to sweeping change <br /> </strong></p>
<p>The mandate letters, combined with previous changes to health care and the soon-to-be launched educational reforms led by a finance minister from the Filmon years, would indicate that the Pallister government is shifting gears, from incremental to sweeping change. Some of these regressive changes will be near impossible to reverse.</p>
<p>Early on in its tenure, the Pallister government made incremental changes to the health care sector, including consolidation, privatization and service cuts. But the pace intensified in April 2017 with the closure of three emergency departments and the announcement that two more would become urgent care units. The reorganization is meant to reduce wait times, but some doctors point out that the real issue is the lack of hospital beds—a problem that would require money, not reorganization, to fix.</p>
<p>Nova Scotia doctor-turned-consultant David Peachy designed the plan for these changes. As <a href="https://winnipegsun.com/opinion/columnists/brodbeck-health-care-consultants-bafflegab-on-winnipeg-ers-a-concern">reported</a> in the <em>Winnipeg Sun</em>, Peachy was summoned back to Winnipeg in May 2019 to explain why two of the three ER closures are now on hold. The massive shift of staff and level of service is being blamed for the increase in wait times at emergency rooms and unprecedented increases in mandatory overtime for nurses. When pressed by the media to explain why his consolidation plan was having the opposite effect it was supposed to, Peachy’s response was bizarrely incomprehensible and misleading. He claimed that the nurses were pleased with the changes when in fact they are on the frontline pushing back.</p>
<p>A Manitoba Nurses Union <a href="https://manitobanurses.ca/mnu-responds-to-peachey">press release</a> explained their actual assessment of the meeting they had with Peachy and comments he made at the media conference: “To characterize the response from nurses as anything short of severe disappointment with the consolidation plan is completely misleading. These changes have caused massive problems in our health care system, from overcrowding in ERs, to a loss of experienced nurses in highly specialized units, and severe workload issues.”</p>
<p><strong>We saw it coming</strong></p>
<p>Since Pallister’s election, progressives have been worried about the comeback of 1990s-era changes to health care and education. These concerns are now festering in the health care sector and will likely escalate once the promised education reforms get underway. We have also been wondering if and when the privatization of Manitoba’s Crown corporations would raise its ugly head.</p>
<p>The mandate letters to all provincial Crowns offer some proof that there is more afoot than incremental change. Of particular concern is the direct order to Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries to look for ways to engage the private sector more in the sale of alcohol. And in November 2018, the government hired B.C.’s ex-premier Gordon Campbell to head an inquiry into the previous NDP government's capital investments in Manitoba Hydro’s generation and transmission capacity. The Pallister government has been highly critical of these projects and it is anticipated the inquiry’s final report will further admonish its predecessor, the investments and the utility.</p>
<p>Pallister’s strategy is similar in many ways to that of his conservative forebear. Despite promises to never privatize MTS, Filmon’s PC government followed what has become a tried and true blueprint for privatizing Crowns in Canada, one that Campbell is very familiar with. It looks like this:</p>
<ul type="disc">
<li>Tell the public there is a major problem with the Crown corporation.</li>
<li>Hire private sector consultants to confirm and cement the narrative that the problem is one of too much government interference.</li>
<li>Separate divisions of the Crown, ostensibly to make it run more efficiently.</li>
<li>Begin to sell off the divisions to the private sector.</li>
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<p>Campbell has since been removed from the inquiry. If whoever takes over is able to exploit the Progressive Conservatives’ constant barrage of criticism about Manitoba Hydro, any number of privatization schemes could unfold. The separation of its demand-side management program into the independent Efficiency Manitoba Crown corporation suggests we could be about to enter the final stage of a privatization strategy.</p>
<p>The overhauling of the health care system, cuts to social services, legislative changes affecting workers, anticipated changes for education and increasingly bold moves around Crown corporations show that Pallister’s government has shifted from incremental to substantive change. Their sudden cancellation of the Manitoba carbon tax would indicate that they are emboldened by the blue wave saturating provinces from Ontario to Alberta, a wave that also threatens to destroy the moderate progress made in those provinces and push all of Canada into rewind.</p>
<p><strong>More questions than answers</strong></p>
<p>As we analyze the changes taking place in Manitoba, a few lines of questioning arise. First of all, to what degree did the NDP in government make a conscious decision not to take the kinds of bold steps required to ensure transformational progressive change in the province? While it is common for governments to move to the centre when elected, could the NDP have pushed the envelope a bit further while maintaining office? In other words, were they more cautious than necessary?</p>
<p>A thorough treatment of that question cannot be addressed here, but it is fair to say that there was not any sort of consensus across the government. While some cabinet ministers and advisors were more cautious, others were able to gently push certain departments in more progressive directions. But the transformation from incremental to structural change never occurred.</p>
<p>Aligned with this is the observation that conservative governments seem far more willing and able to implement sweeping changes when in office than more left-leaning governments. Why is that? It could be that the conservative base, with its much deeper pockets, is more willing to jump on the political bandwagon and support big ideas when they arrive.</p>
<p>The Progressive Conservative party in Manitoba is itself better resourced and equipped to see unpopular changes through. In power, it has proven more willing to take the plunge on risky policies—cutting back on education and health care, for example—than the NDP has been to bring in more aggressive anti-poverty measures or more effective environmental protections. As we in Manitoba know, if you increase the PST by 1% there will be a public outcry. But if you decommission Neighbourhoods Alive!, or cut welfare benefits, you’re probably in the clear.</p>
<p>Which raises a final question: Did progressive community organizations and labour unions miss an important opportunity when they had greater stability under an NDP government? Could they have done a better job educating and politicizing their constituents, and to prepare them to push back when the cuts came? We now need to reckon with the fact that we have not managed to politicize those who work on the frontlines.</p>
<p>Effective resistance to an increasingly sharp right turn has been slow to materialize. A new labour-community health coalition is gaining traction, but building momentum takes time. Unions are also focussed on particular issues such as nursing shortages and overtime, and a Manitoba Federation of Labour initiative to take the province to court over its civil service wage-freeze legislation. These campaigns are necessary and welcome, but we’ll need to do much more.</p>
<p>The blue wave in Canada is going to make it much harder to make progress on the climate crisis and inequality (in its many forms, and especially between Indigenous and settler communities)—the two most pressing problems our country faces. The Kenny and Ford governments’ conservative radicalism is emboldening Manitoba’s Pallister government to play a similarly backward spoiler role on both fronts. Will Manitobans find the energy to fight back?</p>
<p>Labour needs to join with a variety of strong advocacy groups like Make Poverty History Manitoba, Manitoba Childcare Coalition, The Right to Housing Coalition and environmental groups if we are to build the sort of broad-based movement needed now that regressive incrementalism is evolving into radical conservative change. It’s the only way we can respond to the cumulative damage being done to all Manitobans, especially to the most marginalized.</p>
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<p><em><strong>Lynne Fernandez</strong> holds the Errol Black Chair in Labour Issues at the CCPA-Manitoba. <strong>Shauna MacKinnon</strong> is Associate Professor at the University of Winnipeg’s Urban and Inner City Program.</em></p>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/alternative-budgets">Alternative budgets</a></div>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/offices/national">National Office</a></div>
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Fri, 21 Jun 2019 14:12:43 +0000Stuart Trew14853 at https://www.policyalternatives.caFast Facts: It is time to stop contracting Transit Plus outhttps://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/commentary/fast-facts-it-time-stop-contracting-transit-plus-out
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/authors/carlos-sosa">Carlos Sosa</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/authors/zach-fleisher">Zach Fleisher </a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/authors/sara-atnikov">Sara Atnikov</a></div>
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<div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">April 17, 2019</span></div>
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<div class="field-item even"><p><em><sup>First published in the Winnipeg Free Press Friday April 12, 2019</sup></em></p>
<p>For years, an open secret in Winnipeg has been the poor quality of service associated with Transit Plus (previously Handi-Transit), which exists to provide a parallel Winnipeg Transit for those with disabilities. The service provides transportation to approximately 7,500 people a year. Due to problems with the services, the Independent Living Resource Centre (ILRC) was able to, with the assistance of the Public Interest Law Centre (PILC), submit a complaint to the Manitoba Ombudsman. </p>
<p>In January of 2019, the Manitoba Ombbudsman’s report on Winnipeg’s Transit Plus was released, and it publicly highlighted numerous issues that users and advocates of the system had been saying for years. The report made 19 recommendations that addressed a myriad of concerns brought forth by the ILRC. </p>
<p>The release of the report provides the potential for a new direction for Transit Plus. The recommendations are numerous and wide ranging, including making a process for complaints and appeals publicly available, a review to clarify eligibility criteria, and removing the Transit Plus manager from the appeals process. As well, Transit Plus should be working to clarify its “no show” policy, which has caused major headaches for users. Finally, the Ombudsman recommended that the sexual harassment policy, which had shockingly been removed from the driver’s manual, be restored.</p>
<p>Additionally, the Ombudsman recommended that Transit Plus “review its functionality and impact to ensure it reflects reasonably equivalent service to the fixed-route transit system.” </p>
<p>This recommendation tells us what we really need to know: Transit Plus is not living up to its mission to provide an alternative service to those who rely on it. With so many problems arising from the way this service is being delivered, City Hall must ask if it is worth bringing Transit Plus back in house and offering as a publict service. This is a timely consideration, given that the Transit Service Master Plan is being created and due to be released in August 2019.</p>
<p>At the heart of the perils facing Transit Plus, and one not addressed by the Ombudsman, is the fact that Transit Plus service is contracted out instead of provided as a public service. As noted in the report, as of December 2017 there were seven private contractors providing services under a total of 15 separate contracts. Contractors attempt to cut costs by paying their workers minimum wage while not investing in proper infrastructure or training. For example, the report noted that prospective Transit Plus operators – those who drive the cars and vans – are responsible for paying for their own training. This is in contrast to bus operators who, once hired, as provided comprehensive training as part of their employment. </p>
<p>It’s time the City of Winnipeg consider operating Transit Plus in house as a public service, not as a for-profit enterprise for private business. People living with disabilities utilize public services and benefit when the services are of good quality opposed to ones that are poorly delivered by the private sector. People with disabilities deserve service at a comparable level. This is a human rights issue that must be addressed by the City of Winnipeg. </p>
<p>In the most recent edition of CCPA’s Manitoba’s Winnipeg Alternative Budget, and in the 2018 State of the Inner City Report “Green Light Go: Improving Transportation Equity” one of the important calls was to bring Transit Plus back in house, operated by the public sector. </p>
<p>It is when City Hall acts on this critically important issue that we will see an improvement in the services provided to people living with disabilities within the City of Winnipeg.</p>
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<li><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/Manitoba%20Office/2019/04/It_Is_time_to_stop_contracting_transit_plus_out.pdf" class="">It_Is_time_to_stop_contracting_transit_plus_out.pdf</a><div class='meta'><span class="filesize">384.58 KB</span></div></li>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/offices/manitoba">Manitoba Office</a></div>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/municipalities-and-urban-development">Municipalities and urban development</a></div>
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Wed, 17 Apr 2019 15:57:59 +0000Karen Schlichting14783 at https://www.policyalternatives.ca A sales tax could raise $2.5 billion for GTHA: Reporthttps://www.policyalternatives.ca/newsroom/news-releases/sales-tax-could-raise-25-billion-gtha-report
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<div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">January 24, 2019</span></div>
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<div class="field-item even"><p dir="ltr"><span>TORONTO</span><span>—</span><span>Cities in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area facing growing demands for public services and infrastructure, and a provincial government vowing to cut spending, should turn to a regional sales tax to boost their bottom line, says a new report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ Ontario (CCPA-ON) office.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>The report, </span><em>A New Revenue Tool: The case for a Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area sales tax</em><span>, estimates that the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) could raise $2.5 billion from a two per cent sales tax or $1.3 billion if it implemented a one per cent sales tax.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>“That’s a significant chunk of change at a time when municipal governments are facing growing budget squeezes and pressures to improve services. If the Ford government is unwilling to increase funding to municipalities, it should provide their governments with broader taxing powers,” says CCPA Senior Economist Sheila Block, who co-authored the report with CCPA Senior Economist David Macdonald.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>“Municipalities could use that revenue to deal with climate change pressures on local infrastructure, to improve public transit service, to create affordable public child care spaces, and to act on poverty reduction strategies.”</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>If the City of Toronto was alone in taking up the sales tax, it could raise over a billion dollars a year with a two per cent tax or half a billion dollars with a one per cent tax rate. This could fill the budgetary gap that results from the slowdown in land transfer tax revenues. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>“A two per cent sales tax would amount to a six-cent increase in the cost of a coffee or a 30-cent increase in the cost of a movie. At the same time, everyone would benefit from the services that the tax revenue could purchase,” says Block. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>The report addresses concerns about low-income residents’ ability to absorb a sales tax: by illustrating how using some of the revenue to increase the existing Ontario sales tax credit will mitigate impact on low-income households. For example, increasing the Ontario sales tax credit by 50 per cent would result in low-income residents paying only three per cent of the revenues collected by a new two per cent municipal sales tax, while the richest 10 per cent would contribute 22 per cent.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>“Municipalities are reluctant to increase property taxes, but they need new revenue tools to pay for the things that make cities livable, sustainable, and safe. A municipal sales tax could boost revenue and it could be implemented in a way that protects low-income residents,” Block adds.</span><span></span></p>
<p></p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"><span>–30–</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/reports/new-revenue-tool" target="_blank"><em>A New Revenue Tool: The case for a Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area sales tax </em></a><span>is available for download on the CCPA website. For more information please contact: Alyssa O’Dell, CCPA Media and Public Relations Officer, at 613-563-1341 x 307, cell 343-998-7575 or </span><span class="s1"><a href="mailto:media@policyalternatives.ca">media<span class="s2">@policyalternatives.ca</span></a></span><span>.</span></p>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/inequality-and-poverty">Inequality and poverty</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/municipalities-and-urban-development">Municipalities and urban development</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/taxes-and-tax-cuts">Taxes and tax cuts</a></div>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/offices/ontario">Ontario Office</a></div>
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Thu, 24 Jan 2019 21:46:53 +0000Katie Raso14709 at https://www.policyalternatives.caA New Revenue Toolhttps://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/reports/new-revenue-tool
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<div class="field-item even">The case for a Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area sales tax</div>
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<div class="field-label">Author(s):&nbsp;</div>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/authors/sheila-block">Sheila Block</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/authors/david-macdonald">David Macdonald</a></div>
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<div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">January 25, 2019</span></div>
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<a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/Ontario%20Office/2019/01/A%20New%20Revenue%20Tool.pdf" class="download button">Download</a><div class='meta'><span class="filesize">282.45 KB</span><span class="pages">8 pages</span></div> </div>
<p class="p1">This paper looks at how much revenue could be raised from a sales tax in the City of Toronto or in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA). It provides an example of an enhancement to the sales tax credit to mitigate the impact on low-income households and estimates the distributional impact.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/offices/ontario">Ontario Office</a></div>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/inequality-and-poverty">Inequality and poverty</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/municipalities-and-urban-development">Municipalities and urban development</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/taxes-and-tax-cuts">Taxes and tax cuts</a></div>
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<div class="field field-name-field-isbn field-type-text field-label-inline clearfix">
<div class="field-label">ISBN:&nbsp;</div>
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<div class="field-item even">978-1-77125-408-3</div>
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Thu, 24 Jan 2019 18:34:32 +0000Katie Raso14708 at https://www.policyalternatives.caThe right to safety in the cityhttps://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/right-safety-city
<div class="field field-name-field-secondary-title field-type-text field-label-hidden">
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even">The eruption of overdose prevention sites in Vancouver, Ottawa, Toronto, Thunder Bay, Guelph, Montreal and beyond tells an extraordinary story of grassroots activists creating infrastructures of care beyond the state.</div>
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</div>
<div class="field field-name-field-author-ref field-type-node-reference field-label-above">
<div class="field-label">Author(s):&nbsp;</div>
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/authors/fiona-jeffries">Fiona Jeffries</a></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="field field-name-field-release-date field-type-datetime field-label-hidden">
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">January 1, 2019</span></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden">
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even"><p style="text-align: right;"><strong><img src="/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/Screenshot%202019-01-02%2010.46.42.png" alt="Vancouver opioid users at a citizen-run safe injection site." width="994" height="662" /> <sup>The Trailer Overdose Prevention Site (TOPS, as its usually called, or Area 62) in Vancouver. Photo by Travis Lupick</sup></strong><sup>.</sup></p>
<p>In the summer of 2017, amidst an unprecedented and devastating wave of opioid overdoses in cities across Canada, a group of activists erected a couple of tents atop a ragged triangle of grass on the eastern edge of Ottawa's downtown core less than two kilometers from Parliament Hill.</p>
<p>This was the first overdose prevention site in the nation's capital and it offered people a safe place to use drugs. Like similar grassroots initiatives that activists have set up over the past decade in Vancouver, Toronto, London and elsewhere, the tents were a makeshift response to an unspeakably urgent crisis.</p>
<p>Calling itself Overdose Prevention Ottawa (OPO), the group initially set up one tent where people using opioids could come, sit down, inspect and test the drugs they bought to use, inject, then rest. Almost immediately, guests identified a need for a similar space to safely smoke crack, and so the organizers erected a second tent for that purpose.</p>
<p>For the initial handful of OPO activists, the impetus for the site was deeply personal. Many of them had long been involved in the city's grassroots harm reduction efforts. Others had experienced the acute pain of losing a loved one from an overdose. All of them knew people were dying and the authorities charged with protecting some of society's most vulnerable were failing to react.</p>
<p>More than 8,000 people have died from an opioid-induced overdose in Canada since 2016. In October 2018, health officials announced that the crisis of fatal encounters with opioids has become so acute it is causing a decline in life expectancy in B.C. If the trend continues, they explained, the same demographic effect will soon follow for the rest of Canada.</p>
<p>"This is the most significant public health crisis that we've seen for many decades," Canada's Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam told the CBC News before describing the scale of the crisis as something not seen since the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s.</p>
<p>In November, the CBC reported that 10 people a day are dying from drug overdoses in Canada. British Columbia and Alberta have the highest concentration of overdose deaths in the country. In B.C. overdose deaths more than doubled between 2011 and 2016. In January, Dr. Mark Tyndall of the BC Centre for Disease Control described the opioid crisis as "our Ebola."</p>
<p>This fall, federal Health Minister Ginette Petitpas-Taylor responded to the death toll by vowing to make the opioid crisis the ministry's top priority. Harm reduction, she claimed, would be a key pillar of the strategy.</p>
<p>Harm reduction refers to a complex of public health policies and practices that aim to reduce the harms associated with certain activities designated as risky. It is rooted in the idea that it is not necessarily the drugs that cause harm but the system of prohibition and punishment that society has erected and which makes buying and possessing drugs dangerous for the user.</p>
<p>"When someone uses heroin in an alley, hurriedly injecting for fear of police, it is not the drug that causes them to rush and miscalculate their dose, possibly leading to an overdose. It is their fear of persecution," explains Travis Lupick in his account of Vancouver's harm reduction struggles, <em>Fighting for Space</em>.</p>
<p>Drugs are dangerous, we are told, because of the nature of the substance itself. The conditions under which drugs are consumed are considered emblematic of their dangerous nature.</p>
<p>But hospitals dispense opioids every day to relieve pain. These drugs are not killing people in care because the quality of the supply is regulated, the dosages are managed, ingestion is overseen and, should a problem arise, there are trained people on hand who can intervene and who are not made afraid by the spectre of criminalization and stigma. Proponents of harm reduction argue that context matters and shunting drug consumption out of sight while criminalizing and stigmatizing it does the opposite of keeping people safe.</p>
<p>The announcement by Minister Petitpas-Taylor comes at a time of growing pressure linked to the scale of the crisis and the extraordinary efforts of the grassroots OPS movement, which has operated on shoestring budgets gathered from private donations and is fuelled primarily on volunteer labour.</p>
<p>Still, harm reduction remains a marginal position in mainstream health care. OPO's Lisa Wright points out that strategies based on reducing harm have received only 2% of the federal drug strategy's budget—even though harm reduction principles have nominally been at the centre of the strategy since the 1980s.</p>
<p align="center">***</p>
<p>In Ontario, the Progressive Conservative government of Doug Ford evidently disagrees that the overdose crisis demands urgent public attention. This summer, as the death toll climbed, the province shelved plans to fund desperately needed safe consumption sites scheduled to open in Toronto, St. Catharines and Thunder Bay.</p>
<p>Conservatives like to argue that treatment leading to abstinence, not harm reduction, should be government's priority. But as Toronto nurse and OPS activist Leigh Chapman quipped in response to Ford's announcement, "you can't treat people if they're dead."</p>
<p>Ford's position is consistent with the rest of Canada's law-and-order establishment, which opposes harm reduction strategies and sees grassroots overdose prevention sites (OPS) and government approved and regulated safe injection sites (SIS) as condoning illegality.</p>
<p>At the federal level, the former Harper government fought hard to shut down Vancouver's INSITE, Canada's first legal SIS. After losing that battle at the Supreme Court, the government vowed to make it more difficult to open new sites by passing the Respect for Communities Act. Such moves seemed designed to bolster a decades-old punitive War on Drugs conception of public safety while the undertow of criminalization is battled in courts, clinics, legislatures, in the media and on the streets.</p>
<p>The question of how to address the crisis is marked by deep societal polarization. In the conservative imagination, the drug user is designated as an object of fear and social breakdown and the idea of rights for and humane treatment of drug users is seen as condoning crime and rewarding immorality.</p>
<p>But among a spectrum of service providers, researchers and grassroots activists, addiction is seen as symptomatic of a broader mental health and social crisis, which for many is rooted in legacies of colonialism, the kind of alienation and sense of dislocation that has preoccupied critics of capitalism for the last two centuries, and the crisis of care in an era of gutted welfare states. Calls for intensified criminalization are one response. The OPS movement is another.</p>
<p>Wright describes the establishment of the tents in the park as a watershed moment for people who do not have access to a safe place to consume drugs in the city and who have borne the brunt of stigma, criminalization and fear as a result.</p>
<p>Visitors to the site would say, "Oh the tents changed everything," she recounts. "One guy came in during the first days and asked, 'Why are you doing this? No one has cared about us our whole life.'"</p>
<p>Activists identify two catalytic events driving their decision to open the site despite the risk of prosecution: a friend's fatal encounter with fentanyl and the recent launch of an OPS in Toronto's well-worn Moss Park. This and similar sites operating without government consent or support in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside represented a public affirmation of the rights of drug users to inhabit the city and receive care.</p>
<p>The tents provided a critical infrastructure of support in parts of the city weighed down by suffering, fear, neglect and loss. In so doing, they created the city anew.</p>
<p align="center">***</p>
<p>That is perhaps what Henri Lefebvre would say were he here to witness this extraordinary example of grassroots organizing of urban infrastructure. The French intellectual came up with the idea of the right to the city in 1968, while participating in Paris' clamorous summer of social discontent.</p>
<p>For Lefebvre, the right to the city wasn’t a "pseudo-right" to simply appear and touch the surface of urban life as the powerful dictate. Rather, it represented a "transformed and renewed right to urban life." The right to the city in Lefebvre's view means much more than a formal right to be present in the city. It is an affirmation of the need to participate in the making and remaking of our cities.</p>
<p>Lefebvre was participating in and writing about the right to the city in times that were not so different from our own. Paris in the late-1960s was ablaze in debate about urban renewal and the expulsion of poor and working class people from the urban core, furious discontent with institutional authority, and unbridled enthusiasm for the de-alienation of urban life. Lefebre’s writings celebrated the re-conquest of the city's urban core by those who had been shunted aside by forces we now call gentrification.</p>
<p>In recent years, urban geographer David Harvey has revived Lefebvre's ideas for our own era of recurrent crisis, austerity and gentrification. The right to the city, he argues, reminds us that another vision of the city is made possible by creative alliances of the dispossessed and the discontented.</p>
<p>For Lefebvre, the urban street was the domain of spontaneity and the authentic arena of transformative politics. And what could be more spontaneous than a group of activists coming together in sorrow and rage to launch a radical endeavour of care, a transformative project aimed at enabling those rendered most vulnerable to participate more fully in the production of urban life?</p>
<p>The eruption of OPS initiatives in Vancouver, Ottawa, Toronto, Thunder Bay, Guelph, Montreal and beyond over the last few years is an extraordinary story of grassroots activists creating infrastructures of care. By securing safety for some of society's most vulnerable people, the OPS movement expands everyone's right to the city.</p>
<p>The story of the OPS movement is not just a story of life-affirming service delivery, but also a struggle of people devoting themselves to improving life in an increasingly inhospitable urban landscape, in the face of entrenched stigma, criminalization and official neglect.</p>
<p>Once the tents in Ottawa went up, pressure from the city, the police and some of the area's homeowners started to mount. Police circled the site, some angry neighbours intimidatingly took photos and video of people accessing the tents, and Mayor Jim Watson complained about "children and families" not being able to use the scrappy triangle of grass. At one point, Wright recounts, someone dumped 400 pounds of horse manure right in front of the tents.</p>
<p>But Wright also notes that each act of aggression against the site attracted more and more support from the wider community. "People drove in from the suburbs with their families to bring us granola bars and juice boxes.Something you just don't expect."</p>
<p>At first the core group of organizers figured the site would be held together by less than a dozen people working for free, around the clock, "but soon we had over 200 volunteers converging from around the city," says Wright. The core organizers still worked around the clock to keep the space going while engaging with the steady flow of visitors, volunteers and media, as well as naysayers, but they were certainly not alone.</p>
<p>Standing outside Ottawa's OPS tents last summer, University of Victoria nursing professor and OPS organizer Marilou Gagnon explained to <em>MacLean's</em> magazine, “I have this feeling of being at the right place at the right time doing the exact right thing. It’s just very special to witness the kind of resilience and support that people have. And the message that they get [from OPO volunteers] when they visit us is, ‘You know what? We show up every night on our own time and on our own money because your life matters.'”</p>
<p align="center">***</p>
<p>So much of the public discussion about the opioid crisis in North America has focused on adjudicating drug users' right to receive care if they are not in treatment. Much of the media coverage of the crisis has been devoted, understandably, to the devastating scale of the deaths and the morality conflicts surrounding drug use, criminalization, permissiveness and treatment.</p>
<p>Less often highlighted is the remarkable eruption of grassroots infrastructures of care that have saved countless lives and modelled a dispersed and democratic vision of public health. The story that needs to be told and repeated is not only about the epidemic, but also about the activism transforming the city by making life livable.</p>
<p>We live in times when it is not difficult to see hints of societal psychic crisis, a sense of pervasive existential despair. "My theory around addiction is social dislocation," explains Gagnon. The OPS tents seek to provide a counter to that.</p>
<p>"We had food, people felt accepted, we treated them as people, not a clients, and I saw people's lives improve just by using the site. At the OPS people felt safe. They could nod safely [after injecting] because they didn't worry about their stuff getting stolen or being assaulted."</p>
<p>But criminalization, contends Gagnon, makes everything really hard. Prison makes everything even worse for people. And in addition to providing people with a safe place to carefully test out and use in the company of others, one of things an OPS does, Gagnon states, is provide protection from the police.</p>
<p>There was no opioid crisis when Lefebvre was writing about the urban revolution, but today's OPS movement would have impressed him. The labour-intensive work of the OPS is caring labour, generally uncompensated, intensely arduous and life-saving. Without it our cities would be even more devastated and people more imperiled.</p>
<p>Overdose prevention sites across the country have saved countless lives, either by direct intervention when guests overdose in a tent or because being in the tent allowed users to feel safe enough to take their time, test their drugs, and feel a sense of community. Lefebvre would recognize the sites as vital expressions of his call to "de-alienate" urban life, to make life livable for the many who are struggling to improve their cities and their world.</p>
<hr />
<p><em>Fiona Jeffries is is a writer, educator and activist working in the autonomist tradition, and the author of </em>Nothing to Lose but Our Fear: Resistance in Dangerous Times<em> (Between the Lines).</em></p>
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<div class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</div>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/children-and-youth">Children and youth</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/health-health-care-system-pharmacare">Health, health care system, pharmacare</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/housing-and-homelessness">Housing and homelessness</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/human-rights">Human rights</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/inequality-and-poverty">Inequality and poverty</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/municipalities-and-urban-development">Municipalities and urban development</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/public-services-and-privatization">Public services and privatization</a></div>
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<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-1 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above">
<div class="field-label">Offices:&nbsp;</div>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/offices/national">National Office</a></div>
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Wed, 02 Jan 2019 15:49:21 +0000Stuart Trew14695 at https://www.policyalternatives.caRailroad blueshttps://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/railroad-blues
<div class="field field-name-field-secondary-title field-type-text field-label-hidden">
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<div class="field-item even">By critically examining municipal investments into the land adjacent to Montreal’s train tracks, we can see whose leisure, passage, access to public space and safety is given primacy over others.</div>
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<div class="field field-name-field-author-ref field-type-node-reference field-label-above">
<div class="field-label">Author(s):&nbsp;</div>
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/authors/sophie-omanique">Sophie O&#039;Manique</a></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="field field-name-field-release-date field-type-datetime field-label-hidden">
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">January 1, 2019</span></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden">
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even"><p style="text-align: right;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><img src="/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/Screenshot%202018-12-21%2014.54.06.png" alt="Illustration of a CP rail train dividing a cityscape" width="1019" height="657" /></span><sup><strong>Illustration by Tim Scarth / Photos of Montreal by the author</strong></sup></p>
<p>Various train tracks run along the northern edge of the Outremont and Mile End neighbourhoods in Montreal, imposing something of a physical barrier between them and the boroughs to their immediate north, Parc-Extension (Parc-Ex) and La Petite-Patrie. Parc-Ex is further cordoned off by a set of tracks along its eastern edge that separate it from neighbouring Villeray. On the borough’s western edge, another train line, this one reinforced by an imposing fence, creates a firm border with the affluent Town of Mount Royal.</p>
<p>While freight train traffic has diminished significantly over the last few decades, the tracks surrounding Parc-Ex are still used by commuter trains that link the city’s suburban sprawl to the downtown core. At the same time, the tracks are an impediment to convenient passage through the neighbourhoods closest to them—neighbourhoods that have become increasingly residential (and increasingly gentrified) in Montreal’s post-industrial landscape. For proof, we need only look for the holes that appear in the fences bordering the tracks at frequent crossing points. These holes are eventually covered, but they always reappear.</p>
<p>The train lines remain the property of Canadian Pacific Railway (CP Rail), which has repeatedly expressed opposition to the construction of level crossings along the tracks. In an open letter to the <em>Montreal Gazette</em> in 2017, CP Rail President Keith Creel explained he is only concerned about safety and a potential increase in unlawful trespassing. But there is still intense pressure on the company from the city, the boroughs of Plateau Mont-Royal and Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie, and various community groups including the Collective for Level Crossings. Discussions on the matter between city officials and CP Rail, which were mediated by the Canadian Transportation Agency, ended at an impasse in the summer of 2017.</p>
<p>The physical isolation that Montreal’s train tracks engender is not borne equally. West of Parc Avenue, in Montreal’s poorest neighbourhood of Parc-Ex (part of the Villeray–Saint-Michel–Parc-Extension borough), the tracks are a profound impediment to travelling from the north of the city to the south by foot or bike.</p>
<p>The only options for passing under or over the train tracks are the heavily trafficked main artery of Parc Ave. or else Rockland Road, about 1.2 km to the east. When Parc Ave. is not clogged with rush-hour traffic, drivers take advantage of its four lanes to far exceed the outlined speed limit. Despite being the most direct route for cyclists and pedestrians from Parc-Ex further south, Parc Ave. does not have a bike lane. Responding to safety concerns from cyclists, the city decided to exempt this stretch of road from the bylaw that forbids riding bikes on the sidewalk.</p>
<p><img src="/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/The%20Parc%20Ave.%20Underpass.jpg" title="Cyclists and pedestrians must share the sidewalk on the Parc Ave. underpass. " width="300" height="400" style="float: right; margin: 5px;" /></p>
<p>In contrast, to the east of Parc Ave. the train tracks are an inconvenience, but one seldom has to walk more than 500 meters to find a legal crossing. Recently, the bike path that runs along the busy St. Laurent Road that passes under the train tracks was widened and provided with a physical barrier to protect cyclists from cars. And, while unlawful passage is a possibility on the city’s eastern side (although with the risk a hefty fine from the CP Rail police), crossing the two different sets of tracks between Parc-Ex and Outremont is much more challenging.</p>
<p>In spite of the different degrees to which the train tracks restrict pedestrian and bicycle traffic in the Mile End versus Parc-Ex, much of the push for new level crossings comes from the eastern side of the city, in proximity to the Rosemont Metro station. Here residents have organized to issue complaints about the poorly maintained St. Laurent and St. Denis underpasses and to highlight the extra time that walking or cycling around the train tracks adds to their daily movements. If soundbites from these groups in the Mile End and La Petite-Patrie neighbourhoods are easier to find in the media than from anyone in Parc-Ex, it is likely because there are more immediate concerns for community organizers in the latter borough.</p>
<p align="center">***</p>
<p>We often take our built environment for granted, but as the above comparison makes plain, urban infrastructure can exacerbate inequality. By critically examining municipal investments into the land adjacent to Montreal’s train tracks, we can see whose leisure, convenient passage through the city, access to public space and safety is given primacy over others in this city. Following the money in this way can also help us understand the ways in which municipal governments facilitate gentrification.</p>
<p>The land adjacent to the tracks east of Parc Ave. has been developed into a “green corridor” that includes an outdoor gym, sculpture garden, bike and running paths, dog parks, green spaces and a skate park (currently under construction). These public spaces are all heavily used by the predominantly white and middle class groups that live nearby. Moreover, an annual music festival has been initiated next to the tracks and under one of the overpasses, taking advantage of the increasing trendiness of post-industrial landscapes.</p>
<p>At first glance, the repurposing of these spaces looks like democratization, and it would be hard to argue that these developments are to the detriment of the communities that surround them. However, if we are to understand the <em>right to the city</em> as David Harvey and others do—as a collective right to remake the city after our collective vision—then we must ask why no such amenities can be found in Parc-Ex. Why, in fact, is there very little access to any public space in that borough compared to Mile End or La Petite-Patrie?</p>
<p>According to data provided by the City of Montreal, as of 2015, 51.3% of residents in Parc-Ex were immigrants and 56.4% categorized as visible minorities. The median household income of $38,022 in Parc-Ex (in 2015) is also considerably lower than the citywide median income of $50,277. In contrast, in La Petite-Patrie only 16.9% of the population is considered part of a visible minority, and the median household income is closer to the city median at $49,409 (in 2015). To the south of the tracks in the Mile End neighbourhood, more than 85% of the population is white, and the median household income in 2015 was $53,205.</p>
<p>In this instance, public resources have been concentrated in neighbourhoods that are well-off. Further, we can assume that the “green corridor” initiated in La Petite-Patrie and the Mile End is in line with the desires and expectations of the groups living there, since the associated projects have garnered little protest and are widely enjoyed by the surrounding residents.</p>
<p>In Parc-Ex, on the other hand, the redevelopment of the limited public space that exists has garnered opposition from residents. For example, the city recently awarded funding for new seating areas and kiosks for workshops and wares in Place de la Gare at the intersection of Parc Ave. and Jean-Talon Road. But the coalition behind the project, called Parc-Ex Nourriceier, has been criticized locally for not adequately consulting residents in remaking the space.</p>
<p>“This is the northern frontier of gentrification in Montreal, and on this open space…a skirmish over the neighborhood’s future is being fought,” wrote Kathryn Jezer-Morton for the Next City website in June 2017. “[L]ocals worry that the creative placemaking [that the redevelopment of the space represents] is intended to make the neighborhood more attractive to incoming young professionals at the expense of the ethnically diverse and economically marginal population that currently makes heavy use of it.”</p>
<p>To be sure, a scan of the websites for the various organizations involved reveals that the people driving this project are predominantly white, signifying that the demographics of the coalition are not representative of the demographics of the broader neighbourhood. Nevertheless, the kiosks have been constructed as planned. We need to consider this example as one among many cases where the allocation of public resources or initiation of public projects can facilitate gentrification. The government-led construction of convention centres or public tourist attractions are other examples of publicly funded gentrification that results in the displacement of residents.</p>
<p>The isolation that the train tracks create for Parc-Ex and the lack of city investment in public spaces there have likely slowed processes of gentrification. On the eastern side of the tracks, a plenitude of investment appears to be fuelling the urban transformation. In a recent book, <em>Green Gentrification</em>, Kenneth Gould and Tammy Lewis document the phenomenon in various New York City neighbourhoods whereby property values significantly increase in proximity to major city investments in parks, green spaces and other environmental amenities. </p>
<p align="center">***</p>
<p>In Mile End much of the concern about the train tracks centers on the difficulty of accessing the Rosemont Metro station for people who work in the rapidly gentrifying Saint-Viateur Est portion of the borough. With the help of city money, many of the area’s larger buildings that once housed Montreal’s textile and garment industries have been refashioned into studios, co-working spaces, offices, cafes, yoga studios and other obvious hallmarks of gentrification. The need for level crossings here is usually framed in economic terms. For example, Mile End councillor Richard Ryan has said the train tracks are “slowing down labour mobility, and that’s also preventing economic development.”</p>
<p><img src="/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/The%20skeleton%20of%20the%20torn%20down%20warehouse%20on%20the%20South-East%20edge%20fo%20the%20Tracks%20in%20the%20Mile%20End%202.jpg" width="300" height="400" style="margin: 5px; float: left;" /></p>
<p>Saint-Viateur Est is like many other neighbourhoods in rapidly gentrifying North American cities where city governments have sought to attract creative industries in order to repurpose post-industrial spaces and encourage economic development. Inevitably, this strategy caters to a certain kind of urbanite and is accompanied by the displacement of others—frequently new immigrants and/or working class—who are more likely to live in proximity to industrial areas where property values are lower. Both Mile End and La Petite-Patrie were heavily populated by these people in decades past.</p>
<p>Saint-Viateur Est is home to a high concentration of start-ups and the offices of Ubisoft, one of the world’s biggest video game developers. Between 2012 and 2016, the number of jobs in Saint-Viateur Est increased from 7,500 to 13,000, with Ubisoft alone employing 3,000 people in its offices there. The public spaces bordering the train tracks cater to these and other young professionals who work, live and hang out in the trendy area.</p>
<p>Each summer, the city and various corporate partners set up <em>Aire Commune</em>—an open-air networking and events space within and around decommissioned shipping containers—in a gravel loton the southern edge of the tracks. The season-long pop-up festival features craft beer, free wi-fi, food trucks, local DJs and yoga classes. The website for the initiative is tightly branded, highly corporate and plastered with images of young, almost entirely white people having fun. In close proximity, an abandoned warehouse under municipal jurisdiction and used for years by homeless people to escape Montreal’s notoriously harsh winters, was recently torn down. These two city initiatives taken together illustrate who is welcome in this space, and who is not.</p>
<p align="center">***</p>
<p>Meanwhile, in Parc-Ex the city (and province) continue to invest in the construction of the new University of Montreal campus just north of the train tracks in what was once a train yard. Once completed, this new campus promises to bring thousands of students to the area, likely shifting the demographics of the neighbourhood and inflating rents. Developers have already begun construction on luxury apartments, sparking protests from local community organizations like Brique par Brique. While the neighbourhood has until now been sparse on public space, with the influx of students the plans for the campus include four new parks.</p>
<p>The development along the peripheries downtown Montreal’s train tracks offers a case study for how infrastructure can worsen inequality, how the allocation of public resources favours some groups over others and how the city managers are working to facilitate gentrification. This discussion raises many more questions about how to pursue a more collective right to the city—both for policy makers and for organizers.</p>
<p>How can we improve access to public space and remove impediments to free passage by foot and bike without spurring gentrification? How might well-intentioned community organizing in one part of the city leave behind people in others? And how can we form coalitions across neighbourhoods that are dealing with similar challenges, yet make sure that the loudest voices are not those with the most social capital based on race, gender and class? Only by pursuing the answers to these questions can we ensure that the right to the city is one we bear collectively.</p>
<hr />
<p><em>Sophie O'Manique is a PhD student in geography at the Graduat Centre, City University of New York, and is currently living in Montreal.<br /></em></p>
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<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-2 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above">
<div class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</div>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/economy-and-economic-indicators">Economy and economic indicators</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/employment-and-labour">Employment and labour</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/environment-and-sustainability">Environment and sustainability</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/housing-and-homelessness">Housing and homelessness</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/inequality-and-poverty">Inequality and poverty</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/municipalities-and-urban-development">Municipalities and urban development</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/race-and-anti-racism">Race and anti-racism</a></div>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/offices/national">National Office</a></div>
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Fri, 21 Dec 2018 19:57:12 +0000Stuart Trew14689 at https://www.policyalternatives.caThe Monitor, January/February 2019https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/monitor-januaryfebruary-2019
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<p>Ten years ago the political geographer David Harvey wrote, “The freedom to make and remake our cities and ourselves is…one of the most precious yet most neglected of our human rights.” With roots in 1960s civil rights struggles, Henri Levebvre's concept of a "right to the city" was revitalized by Harvey and others in the heat of the 2008 financial crisis and Occupy Wall Street. Since then, it has grown into a global movement for the “right of all inhabitants, present and future, permanent and temporary, to use, occupy and produce just, inclusive and sustainable cities, defined as a common good essential to a full and decent life.”</p>
<p>Contributors to this new year's edition of the Monitor find examples of the "right to the city" at work in Canada alongside formidable challenges to its collaborative, democratic vision for our urban centres. Here's a sample of what you'll find inside:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/right-city-foundation-social-justice" target="_self">The right to the city as a foundation for social justice</a>: </strong>Lynne Fernandez and Shauna MacKinnon present their view from Winnipeg.</li>
<li><strong>The right to a home in the city: </strong>Ottawa tentants are fighting back against the big asset managers, writes Laura Neidhart.</li>
<li><strong><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/railroad-blues" target="_self">Railroad blues</a>: </strong>Sophie O'Manique tracks the unequal investment, infrastructure and access in gentrified, post-industrial Montreal.<strong> <br /></strong></li>
<li><strong>"This is not my beautiful house." </strong>Matthew Peters questions Halifax's stubborn attachment to its colonialist monuments.</li>
<li><strong>Is transit a right?</strong> Michelle Perry wonders why Canadian municipalities are so hostile to the idea of free public transit.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.policynote.ca/whats-missing-from-the-uber-debate/" target="_blank"><strong>What's missing from the Uber debate in B.C.?</strong></a> Alex Hemingway sees potential for a co-operative ride-sharing platform in the Metro Vancouver area.</li>
<li><strong>Whose streets?</strong> With enemies at Queen's Park, and developers running roughshod over community after community, Torontonians are asserting their right to a diverse and affordable "world class" city, writes Joe Fantauzzi.</li>
<li><strong>Google's "Smart City of Surveillance" faces new resistance</strong>, writes Ava Kofman.</li>
<li><strong>The right to play in our public spaces</strong>: Paul Shaker and Sonja Macdonald asked where children are playing in one Hamilton neighbourhood. The surprising results offer lessons for urban developers.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/right-safety-city" target="_self"><strong>Overdose Prevention Societies and the right to safety in our cities</strong></a>, by Fiona Jeffries.</li>
<li><strong>Get to know the neighbours</strong>: Cheryl Gladu explores Canada's collaboratve housing experiments in democratic living.</li>
<li><strong>The right to come home</strong>: More than most, Palestinian refugees are denied a right to the city—theirs or anyone else's, writes Clare Mian.</li>
</ul>
<p><span>To receive the <em>Monitor</em> at home, </span><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/give">please make a donation to the CCPA</a><span>.</span></p>
<p>Cover illustration by <a href="http://francois-vigneault.com/" target="_blank">François Vigneault</a>.</p>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/alternative-budgets">Alternative budgets</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/corporations-and-corporate-power">Corporations and corporate power</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/economy-and-economic-indicators">Economy and economic indicators</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/employment-and-labour">Employment and labour</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/energy-policy">Energy policy</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/environment-and-sustainability">Environment and sustainability</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/housing-and-homelessness">Housing and homelessness</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/human-rights">Human rights</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/inequality-and-poverty">Inequality and poverty</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/international-trade-and-investment-deep-integration">International trade and investment, deep integration</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/municipalities-and-urban-development">Municipalities and urban development</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/public-services-and-privatization">Public services and privatization</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/race-and-anti-racism">Race and anti-racism</a></div>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/offices/national">National Office</a></div>
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Fri, 21 Dec 2018 18:16:35 +0000Stuart Trew14688 at https://www.policyalternatives.caThe right to the city as a foundation for social justicehttps://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/right-city-foundation-social-justice
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<div class="field-item even">A view from the streets of Winnipeg</div>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/authors/lynne-fernandez">Lynne Fernandez</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/authors/shauna-mackinnon">Shauna MacKinnon</a></div>
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<div class="field-item even"><p>The right to the city comes out of critical theory, a branch of intellectual thought originating in the early 20<sup>th</sup> century at the University of Frankfurt. The Frankfurt School consisted of a group of radical scholars who theorized about the rise of mass popular culture and its effect on society. A December 2016 <em>New Yorker</em> article by Alex Ross, “The Frankfurt School Knew Trump was Coming,” points out how relevant their ideas are today: “The combination of economic inequality and pop-cultural frivolity is precisely the scenario [Theodor] Adorno and others had in mind: mass distraction masking élite domination.”</p>
<p>Critical theory provided a base for the emergence of critical <em>urban</em> theory later on in the 20<sup>th</sup> century. Within this group, Henri Lefebvre, Manuel Castells and David Harvey were key in advancing the idea that there is such a thing as the right to the city (RTC). In the introduction to their 2009 book, <em>Cities for People, Not for Profit</em>, Neil Brenner, Peter Marcuse and Margit Mayer explain how RTC scholars see cities as “major basing points for the production, circulation and consumption of commodities,” and believe every aspect of urban organization, governance and sociopolitical conflict stems from this role. An RTC framework, in other words, allows us to peer under the hood and observe the motor and transmission of urban life.</p>
<p>The fundamental role that urban centres play in capitalism has only intensified under neoliberalism. We see it in what Brenner et al. refer to as the hyper-commodification of urban land, housing, transportation, utilities and public space. Housing prices in Vancouver and Toronto are driven sky high by speculation (see Michal Rozworski’s article in the November-December 2018 <em>Monitor</em>); public transportation has declined in many cities while single-use vehicles and app-based ride-sharing services choke our deteriorating roadways; developers exercise almost total control over urban spaces like True North Square in Winnipeg. These are all examples of how cities are built to meet the needs of profit rather than people.</p>
<p>The right to the city is valuable not only for helping us understand urbanization: as a theoretical framework, it is also extremely useful in helping us build resistance to mass consumerism and corporate control of our cities. The right to the city provides the impetus for those who are socially and economically excluded to take back the direction of their lives—to “expose, propose and politicize,” as Marcuse puts it. Groups working on single-issue campaigns including social housing, job creation, environmental issues, workers’ rights and poverty reduction, as well as anyone working within more transformative campaigns to disrupt neoliberalism and colonization, can mobilize under the RTC banner.</p>
<p>As Harvey notes in his 2012 book, <em>Rebel Cities</em>, “[h]ow such disparate groups may become self-organized into a revolutionary force is the big political problem.” Nationally this worthy project feels like a non-starter, at least at this political moment in Canada’s history. The RTC framework is appealing locally for its flexibility in accommodating any number of causes and groups in their pursuit of social and economic justice. It may be especially useful in a city like Winnipeg, with its many overlapping social realities.</p>
<p><strong>Exposing, proposing and politicizing in Winnipeg</strong></p>
<p>Whereas a city like Winnipeg displays all the usual characteristics of neoliberal urban development—the dominance of developers, ever expanding suburbs and car-friendly infrastructure—its large Indigenous population means the way groups might collectively respond to this type of urbanization will differ from, say, Toronto or Vancouver. Decolonization must play a part in any RTC movement in Canadian Prairie cities like Winnipeg.</p>
<p>There are a number of initiatives in Winnipeg that align with a RTC philosophy even though they have not been expressly framed that way. We propose that more consciously framing our efforts under the RTC banner would draw out how much they share in common, with the potential to strengthen a co-operative power base from which we are more likely to achieve our social justice goals.</p>
<p>Harvey witnessed this dynamic in action at the U.S. Social Forum in Atlanta in 2007. He writes in <em>Rebel Cities</em> that after years of fighting on their own for a variety of social justice causes, U.S. groups saw the benefit of unifying under a common RTC framework. Political geographer Elvin Wyly also notes in a 2010 article that diverse groups, without being aware of it, are already “doing work that constitutes a collective project of critical urbanism.”</p>
<p>We have been involved in several movements that forced change at the political level through the strength of collective organizing and mobilization, and that fit well under a RTC framework. Those groups include Winnipeg’s Alternative Municipal Budget (AMB), the city’s Right to Housing (R2H) campaign, Make Poverty History Manitoba (MPHB), and the Migrant Workers Solidarity Network (MWSN).</p>
<p>In what follows, we examine the nature of each of these four causes or movements, how research was used to mobilize the community and what changes were achieved. We look at how such groups have begun to consolidate their efforts, then propose how they might become even more united and effective under the “right to the city” banner.</p>
<p><strong>Alternative Municipal Budget</strong></p>
<p>Economist John Loxley introduced the idea of alternative budgets to the grassroots activist coalition Cho!ces in the 1990s. Cho!ces produced the first alternative budgets in Canada for both Manitoba and Winnipeg, but the practice eventually spread to the CCPA’s national office, where an Alternative Federal Budget is released every year. CCPA-Manitoba brought back the Winnipeg Alternative Municipal Budget (AMB) in 2008 and has put one out every four years since then.</p>
<p>AMBs are developed and published in election years as a way to educate, inspire and challenge candidates and voters. Unlike municipal government documents, which can be overwhelmingly complex, the AMB describes important elements of the actual budget in simple terms and proposes how the city’s wealth could be distributed differently based on different (not neoliberal) values.</p>
<p><img src="/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/Screenshot%202018-12-13%2016.45.55.png" alt="Alternative Municipal Budget 2018" width="200" height="260" style="float: right; margin: 5px;" /></p>
<p>Importantly, Winnipeg’s AMB is an exercise in local participatory democracy. Various community groups discuss what the focus should be for the year and strategize around the financial framework. AMB partners include community-based organizations working with marginalized women, newcomers and the Indigenous community, groups such as Bike Winnipeg, the Green Action Centre, the Manitoba Library Association and Food Matters Manitoba, as well as unions and academics. Economists place the participants’ spending priorities in a fiscal framework that is then contrasted with the city’s actual budget.</p>
<p>The exercise clearly shows how the community’s priorities differ from the city’s. In the 2018 AMB, <em><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/Manitoba%20Office/2018/06/Alt%20Municipal%20Budget%202018.pdf" target="_blank">Imagine a Winnipeg</a>, </em>we applied sustainable budgeting principles to accommodate environmental issues and income inequality. When you raise and spend money differently, you begin to imagine a different city. The AMB increased taxes—including business taxes—more than the city, implemented fees to discourage car use and urban sprawl, and spent that money on electric buses, a low-income bus pass and the remunicipalization of Handi-Transit, a privatized parallel service for physically challenged persons that is frequently criticized for poor service.</p>
<p>The 2018 AMB lowered the ever-ballooning police budget by 2%, arguing that it is starving the departments that could better deal with the root causes of crime. Using an equity lens, the AMB found that increases in policing have been “disproportionately targeted in Winnipeg’s Black and Indigenous communities under the guise of outreach to those communities.” So, we introduced policies to educate officers about the social conditions, including colonization, that force people into crime.</p>
<p>The AMB also incorporated policies from the municipal poverty reduction report released around the same time by Make Poverty History Manitoba. And it allocated funds for increasing transparency and democracy at city hall while implementing electoral reform to encourage more Winnipeggers to get involved in city politics.</p>
<p>The AMB has proven to be a valuable tool in mobilizing the community around a common cause, educating the public and pushing politicians to implement progressive policies. We believe that past AMBs helped the city understand it needed to raise property taxes (after a 14-year tax freeze) and bring in developer fees to discourage urban sprawl.</p>
<p>The 2018 AMB was used as a basis for a mayoral candidate debate, an op-ed in the <em>Winnipeg Sun</em>, media interviews and newspaper stories, and various classroom and public presentations. The mayoral incumbent in the October elections, Brian Bowman, even promised to bring in a low-income bus pass if re-elected, which he was.</p>
<p><strong>Right to Housing</strong></p>
<p>Right to Housing (R2H) is a Winnipeg-based advocacy coalition made up of 58 organizations with several hundred individual supporters. The coalition’s strength has been its belief that researchers and activists can work side by side to change public policy.</p>
<p>Since forming in 2006, R2H has been disciplined in its call for an increase in social housing for low-income individuals and families. Although a single-issue coalition, R2H also recognizes that some people are more vulnerable than others, and it works in collaboration with groups representing Indigenous communities, women and newcomers who are calling on governments to build more social housing for their constituencies. In recognition of the need to connect with other social justice campaigns, an R2H member participated in the development of last year’s AMB.</p>
<p>Long before the Truth and Reconcilliation Commission issued its calls to action in 2015, R2H was an active ally of First Nations claims for space previously occupied by the Department of National Defence. When the government of Canada relocated the Princess Patricia’s Light Infantry Division to Camp Shilo near Brandon, Manitoba, several housing units were left vacant. R2H aligned with Pequis First Nation to advocate for this now “surplus land” on Treaty 1 territory to be repatriated by the First Nation as part of its land entitlement.</p>
<p>R2H had considerable success in <em>exposing</em> the need for social housing, <em>proposing</em> targets and timelines for government intervention, and <em>politicizing</em> its members and the broader public to call upon their government to take action. And after years of strategic political advocacy between 2011 and 2016, the R2H demand was met with the addition of a record number of new social housing units as well as the retrofitting of hundreds of units in disrepair.</p>
<p>R2H has entered a new era with a provincial Conservative government that is now privatizing public housing rather than building new units. However, the coalition remains strong and focused, while also working alongside other groups who increasingly recognize that the issues they are passionate about are part of a collective struggle for social and economic justice in the city of Winnipeg and beyond.</p>
<p style="text-align: right;"><strong><img src="/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/MPHM%20rally%20Oct%2011%202018.jpg" alt="MPHM Rally Oct 11 2018" width="1500" height="1000" /></strong><sup>Photo by Andrew Tod, Manitoba Federation of Labour<strong><br /></strong></sup></p>
<p><strong>Make Poverty History Manitoba</strong></p>
<p>Advocacy efforts in the early 2000s to convince the government of Manitoba to establish a comprehensive plan to address poverty were unsuccessful. In 2008, organizations including CCPA-Manitoba pooled their collective resources under the banner of Make Poverty History Manitoba (MPHM) to develop their own poverty-fighting plan the community could really get behind.</p>
<p>The Manitoba government responded to this pressure by releasing a poverty-reduction strategy a few weeks ahead of the scheduled release date of the MPHM vision document, <em>The View From Here</em>. The coalition welcomed the government’s initiative, but continued to advocate its own grassroots plan, which included specific timelines and targets.</p>
<p>In 2015, MPHM updated the <em>View From Here</em> and demonstrated that some progress had been made. The coalition continues to use the living document as its rallying cry for action on poverty aimed at all three levels of government. In 2017, MPHM developed a municipally focused plan, <em>Winnipeg Without Poverty: Calling on the City to Lead</em>, which also figures prominently in the Alternative Municipal Budget.</p>
<p><strong>Migrant Workers Solidarity Network</strong></p>
<p>As in much of Canada, Manitoba’s vegetable farms have come to rely on migrant labour during the growing season. Each year, up to 400 workers, most of them from Mexico, are received in the province under the Seasonal Agriculture Workers Program (SAWP). From spring to fall, these workers, mostly men, do physically demanding labour that most Canadians will not do.</p>
<p>In 2009, a group called the Migrant Workers Solidarity Network (MWSN) undertook a campaign of public education so consumers would understand who was harvesting their produce and how they were being treated. The network, made up of members of the Latino community, faith-based groups, labour advocates and academics, also met with relevant provincial ministers to push the province to enforce employment standards and grant the workers access to provincial health care. MWSN adopted the strategy used by Right to Housing and Make Poverty History Manitoba to determine issues of concern; as in both earlier joint efforts, CCPA-Manitoba helped by producing research and policy recommendations that could be disseminated publicly.</p>
<p>The conditions under which migrant agricultural workers operate made it impossible to do extensive consultations. But MWSN members were able to talk to some workers and knew that the private health care coverage they had was not working well. As was the case with R2H and MPHM, the group homed in on one simple, clear ask and undertook a campaign to pressure the government to grant the workers access to provincial health care.</p>
<p>Although the network wasn’t part of a community coalition per se, it did have the support of the labour community. Local 832 of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) was happy to work with MWSN, for example, by pledging resources to translate an information pamphlet about the workers’ rights and how they could access information about employment standards and workplace health and safety.</p>
<p>MWSN launched its health care campaign with a series of CCPA-Manitoba fact-sheets called “Fast Facts,” which explained how and why the farm workers were here, the conditions under which they worked, and a plea to grant the workers access to the provincial health care system. MWSN members were invited to speak at local conferences and university classes about their advocacy.</p>
<p>The Manitoba Federation of Labour was also applying pressure on the government to open the health care system to migrant workers. UFCW pledged more money to the MWSN so it could print postcards urging the government to grant the workers access to health care benefits. Hundreds of these postcards were signed and sent to the premier’s office.</p>
<p>In 2013, MWSN produced a larger report that included interviews with migrant workers, a literature review and policy recommendations. At the launch of the latter report, the provincial minister of immigration and multiculturalism announced that the NDP government would grant health care coverage to migrant workers. The combined efforts of the labour movement and the research and public advocacy work of MWSN had paid off.</p>
<p>Beyond the lack of health care, workers had complained to us about being paid less than minimum wage through the piece-rate system, and of having wages held back. MWSN met with the head of the province’s special investigations unit for employers of temporary foreign workers. The information the group provided alerted the unit to specific problems that, when investigated, were fixed.</p>
<p>MWSN still meets and interacts with the workers today and is connected to a national group that advocates on behalf of temporary workers everywhere. The Manitoba network is currently working with farms to offer English classes to the workers—a need that was identified through interviews and the MWSN policy development process.</p>
<p><strong>The multi-dimensional right to the city</strong></p>
<p>Winnipeg’s many grassroots organizations are mobilized and can be highly effective. But there are limits to the ability of single-issue campaigns to achieve major public policy change. Sanford Schram, the American political scientist, rightly states that “getting beyond neoliberalism will take political mobilization on multiple levels inside and outside the conventional public policy system.</p>
<p>Thankfully, the successes of the Migrant Workers Solidarity Network, Make Poverty History Manitoba, Right to Housing and the Alternative Municipal Budget process offer a signpost for what more could be accomplished if groups rallied together, and in particular if that happened under the “right to the city” banner.</p>
<p>Migrant workers naturally tend to live outside city limits, close to the vegetable farms that employ them. But the distinction between the rural and urban in this context merely hides the ways these workers’ rights are being violated. By giving voice to migrants’ pleas for permanent residency, health care and fair pay, MWSN recognized their claim to share in the benefits of urbanization—their right to the city.</p>
<p>The MWSN example also shows the power of uniting grassroots campaigns with local labour unions. However, the labour movement could be better at responding to what Lefebvre describes in his RTC writing as the “cry and demand out of the streets and neighbourhods.”</p>
<p>Of course labour has the right to direct its members resources as it sees fit. However, we propose that current practice is shortsighted. Unionized workers and the organizations that represent them must join with others to challenge neoliberal capitalism. Our collective interests are best served by providing sustained support for broad-based organizing efforts such as the coalitions mentioned here. A RTC framework could make these efforts more attractive to union and non-union organizations alike.</p>
<p>The Alternative Municipal Budget itself offers a foundation on which a right to the city could be built in Winnipeg, as it already combines efforts by R2H, MPHM and the labour community. But the AMB brings these and other groups together only on a temporary basis and there is no mechanism to sustain collective advocacy efforts once the final report is published. By necessity, participants all too often return to their important issue-based work, with little time and energy to put toward a truly transformative, or as Harvey would say, revolutionary effort.</p>
<p>The social justice groups described above share the view that broader societal transformation is required and that focusing on one issue at a time will not get us there. Building our efforts on a “right to the city” framework, and funding that effort appropriately, could consolidate the aspirations of a larger group of equity seekers, including those most deeply affected by regressive public policies. </p>
<p>Fundamentally, we are all working to expose the corrosive effects neoliberalism on democracy and our urban spaces, propose new ways forward that are beneficial to everyone, and politicize and mobilize those who seek a more equitable world. The right to the city can get us closer to this justice we seek.</p>
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<p><em>Lynne Fernandez holds the Errol Black Chair in Labour Issues at CCPA Manitoba. Shauna MacKinnon is Associate Professor in the Urban and Inner City Program at the University of Winnipeg.</em></p>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/agriculture">Agriculture</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/alternative-budgets">Alternative budgets</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/economy-and-economic-indicators">Economy and economic indicators</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/employment-and-labour">Employment and labour</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/environment-and-sustainability">Environment and sustainability</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/health-health-care-system-pharmacare">Health, health care system, pharmacare</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/housing-and-homelessness">Housing and homelessness</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/human-rights">Human rights</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/indigenous-issues">Indigenous issues</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/inequality-and-poverty">Inequality and poverty</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/municipalities-and-urban-development">Municipalities and urban development</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/race-and-anti-racism">Race and anti-racism</a></div>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/offices/national">National Office</a></div>
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Thu, 13 Dec 2018 21:40:50 +0000Stuart Trew14679 at https://www.policyalternatives.caState of the Inner City Report 2018https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/reports/state-inner-city-report-2018
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/authors/ellen-smirl">Ellen Smirl</a></div>
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<div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">December 7, 2018</span></div>
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<a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/Manitoba%20Office/2018/12/State_of_the_inner_city_report_2018.pdf" class="download button">Download</a><div class='meta'><span class="filesize">3.33 MB</span><span class="pages">36 pages</span></div> </div>
<p>Transportation is essential for getting almost everything we need in our daily lives yet many people in Winnipeg’s inner city struggle to access affordable and convenient transportation options. This year’s Report documents the voices of those who struggle with transportation barriers and puts forward practical policy solutions to achieve transportation equity.</p>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/inequality-and-poverty">Inequality and poverty</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/municipalities-and-urban-development">Municipalities and urban development</a></div>
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<div class="field-item even">978-1-77125-431-1</div>
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Tue, 04 Dec 2018 16:09:04 +0000Karen Schlichting14656 at https://www.policyalternatives.caAre we addicted to debt?https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/are-we-addicted-debt
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<div class="field-item even">Bubble or no bubble, the housing affordability crisis creates systemic risk for the Canadian economy</div>
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<div class="field-label">Author(s):&nbsp;</div>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/authors/michal-rozworski">Michal Rozworski</a></div>
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<div class="field field-name-field-release-date field-type-datetime field-label-hidden">
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<div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">November 1, 2018</span></div>
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<div class="field-item even"><p><img src="/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/Screenshot%202018-10-26%2011.18.55.png" alt="Two graphs showing household housing debt and housing prices next to each other." width="1020" height="610" style="vertical-align: middle;" /></p>
<p>We’re now 10 years on from the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression. Or, as our national mythology puts it, 10 years since Canada breathed a deep sigh of relief as the crisis mostly grazed our economy and financial system.</p>
<p>Since 2008, we've had 10 years of congratulatory back-patting over our system of financial regulation, 10 years of low inflation and low interest rates, 10 years of periodically oil-driven economic growth—and 10 years of exploding housing prices, of renovictions and demovictions, of working people pushed out of some cities and a real estate investment bonanza for the homegrown and foreign rich.</p>
<p>Ten years after <em>the</em> crisis, many Canadian cities are <em>still in</em> crisis. What follows is a look at the contours and roots of our urban housing crisis, and some avenues for exiting it in a way that would benefit the majority of people.</p>
<p><strong>Housing boil and housing bubble</strong></p>
<p>Average housing prices have grown by 80% Canada-wide since their lows in the winter of 2009<a id="_anchor_1" name="_msoanchor_1" href="#_msocom_1"></a>, and more than doubled in Vancouver and Toronto (as measured by the widely used composite index maintained by the Canadian Real Estate Association, which incorporates everything from condos to single-family homes). Among Northern countries, only Hong Kong, Iceland and New Zealand saw bigger housing spikes over the same post-crisis period, according to the Bank of International Settlements.</p>
<p>In Canada, housing prices have been driven higher largely by land appreciation; it is not uncommon in major cities for the structures built on land to comprise just a small sliver of the value of a property. For example, between 2007 and 2018, real estate in British Columbia doubled in value, appreciating by nearly $1 trillion in inflation-adjusted terms, the vast majority of that a result of higher land values.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, as real estate prices have exploded, wage growth has been tepid at best. Between 2008 and 2017, the nominal median wage has gone up 22% Canada-wide and 20% in both Ontario and B.C. Adjusted for inflation this is considerably less than one percentage point per year in real growth.</p>
<p>As housing prices have grown, the rate of home ownership, or the share of households that own the home in which they live (67.8% in 2016), remains near where it was before the crisis (68.4% in 2006). However, this drop is more pronounced when we consider that the home ownership rate had been climbing steadily from around 60% in 1971 to 69% in 2011.</p>
<p>These small changes in the overall rate also hide significantly <a href="https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11f0019m/2010325/t014-eng.htm" target="_blank">greater <em>inequality</em></a> in home ownership. Whereas in 1971, those in the top 20% by income had a home ownership rate approximately 10% higher than those in the bottom fifth, this difference has grown severalfold in the ensuing decades. Millennials are entering home ownership in small numbers and later than their forebearers: 50% of millenials own a home today compared with 55% of people their age in 1981. </p>
<p>The indebtedness of Canadian households has risen steadily since the crisis: from 150% of disposable income in 2008 to 170% today <a id="_anchor_2" name="_msoanchor_2" href="#_msocom_2"></a>(though this pales in comparison with the twofold larger relative increase from 105% in 1998 to 150% a decade later). This 10-year increase diverges sharply from the situation in the United States, where households noticeably deleveraged after the crisis.</p>
<p>On the flipside, housing wealth is now staggeringly above 430% of disposable income (in January 2018) reflecting consistent increases since the 1990s. This is the paradox of the housing crisis: it has literally created wealth under the feet of one set of Canadians and foreign property owners—many of them already wealthy—while making simple existence for another set, in particular the urban poor, increasingly difficult.</p>
<p>Housing appreciation has turned some working people into millionaires, even if for now only on paper, and some regular people into rentiers. Real estate boosters love these examples of "rags to riches" and argue that there are other countries, notably Australia and several in Scandinavia, where household debt comprises an even higher percentage of household income than it does in Canada. The point, however, is not to argue about abstract statistics, but to see how runaway housing markets affect people.</p>
<p>Housing wealth is very unequally distributed. <a href="https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/cv.action?pid=1110004901">According to 2016 data from Statistics Canada</a>, the top 20% of Canadian households own 63% of Canadian total net worth (assets minus mortgage debt) in real estate, while the bottom 40% own just 2% of the same. Properties that are not principal residences are more unequally distributed: the top quintile owns 81% of the net worth here.</p>
<p>In addition, while property prices and debt have accelerated, so have increases in rent for tenants in many cities, especially burdening those in the working class who did not buy into the property lottery at the "right" time.</p>
<p><strong>It was not an accident</strong></p>
<p>Far more interesting than how far Canadian housing is into bubble territory is the question of what impact the current run-up in values is having on Canadians, particularly the working class of the country. Here we need to go back further than just the past 10 years. </p>
<p>The start of the current expansion in Canadian mortgage debt and house prices coincided with the beginning of the era of stable low inflation and relatively low interest rates in the late 1990s, far preceding the 2008 financial crisis. This story about cheap credit and high expectations is one Stephen Poloz, the current governor of the Bank of Canada, likes to tell and there is some truth to it: financing real estate was relatively cheap already in the late 1990s.</p>
<p>But this early acceleration in Canada's housing market coincided with another major shift, one that went far beyond a change in the price of loans.</p>
<p>In 1993, the last federal budget tabled by Brian Mulroney's Progressive Conservative government ended all new federal funding for social housing construction outside of First Nations reserves. The feds were out of the business of creating new social housing, as they put it. This was a marked change from previous decades when the federal government helped finance about 20,000 units of social housing per year—from direct public housing in the 1960s and into the ‘70s to non-profit and co-op housing in the 1980s. In most provinces outside B.C. and Quebec, provincial governments did not pick up the slack following the 1993 announcement.</p>
<p>With the sudden imposition of social housing austerity, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) shifted from homebuilder to mortgage insurer. The move away from direct and indirect public provision only further solidified long-standing economic and cultural pressures toward home ownership. And with this move the federal government only accelerated the transformation of housing from human necessity into investment good, to be supplied almost exclusively by the private sector.</p>
<p>Although Canada was ruled by market-friendly conservatives under Brian Mulroney in the 1980s, it was the Liberals, elected in 1993 under Chrétien, who made the greatest strides in <a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/04/canada-austerity-stephen-harper-conservatives/" target="_blank">transforming the Canadian state</a>—shifting it towards neoliberalism and near-permanent austerity. Fiscal policy was defanged, now used to drastically reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio, while monetary policy assumed the role of stimulating the economy, albeit within a strict inflation-targeting mandate.</p>
<p>With interest rates down from their 1980s highs, the state out of the housing game, and new policies from the CMHC, including increased mortgage protection and significantly lower down-payment requirements (from 20% down to 5%), the stage was set for the start of a long housing boom.</p>
<p>The early boom years were characterized by relative affordability. This was the time when the financialization of housing—its transformation into a major investment asset—was just taking off. Interest rates fell and house prices began to slowly recover from their 1990s recession lows. The bias toward home ownership, driven by fiscal contraction and monetary expansion, went hand-in-glove with long-standing policies at the provincial and city level such as exclusionary zoning and weak rent controls, as well as cultural beliefs about the primacy of the car or the importance of owning a single-family home.</p>
<p>The product of all these developments was a complex set of economic, legal and social factors that ultimately set the stage for the current affordability and liveability emergency in our cities. It is within these structures that power imbalances have evolved over the past decade.</p>
<p>In the immediate aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, triggered that September by the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, the Bank of Canada participated in the co-ordinated effort by many central banks to stabilize the global financial system. And while Stephen Harper ironically led one of the developed world’s more aggressive bouts of fiscal stimulus (which included <a href="http://www.progressive-economics.ca/2013/06/22/housing-policy-under-harper/" target="_blank">substantial social housing investment</a>) the trend toward slow-motion, structural austerity returned by the start of the 2010s.</p>
<p>The Bank of Canada, on the other hand, continued to maintain very low interest rates, propping up the Canadian economy and doing its part to fight off a deeper global depression. With fiscal policy levers largely atrophied, monetary policy has taken up the long-term task of stimulating and stabilizing the economy—in Canada and much of the rest of the world.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, post-crisis monetary policy also stoked the flames of the already ongoing real estate boom. Lower short-term interest rates in a world of increasing inequality in income and wealth created fertile conditions for asset price inflation—a frenzied "search for yield" with everything from equities to collector art to real estate seeing enormous price gains globally.</p>
<p>Capital, in significant part domestic but also international, alighted on Canadian real estate as a safe, relatively high-return asset. Developers were only too happy to keep building safety deposit boxes in the sky, helping domestic and foreign capital, rather than people, find a home.</p>
<p>There is a tension here, however. Cheap credit is generally to be welcomed: it shifts the balance of power in credit markets toward debtors and away from creditors, mapping relatively cleanly as a shift toward the poor from the wealthy. It is therefore cheap credit in the context of spectacular imbalances of economic power (that shape policy at every level) that has helped accelerate housing price inflation and encumbered access to shelter—something that by all reasonable accounts should be a human right—for many working and low-income people.</p>
<p>The housing crisis is just as much or more so about weak rent control, exclusionary zoning in low-density cities, preferential tax treatment of capital gains (especially capital gains from the sale of principal residences) and low property taxes as it is about loose monetary policy. It is no surprise that Vancouver, with some of the lowest carrying costs of real estate (primarily low property taxes) of any major Canadian city, has experienced the deepest crisis.</p>
<p>While Vancouver and Toronto, as global cities, were the first to catch the bug of extreme housing speculation, the malady is now spreading to smaller cities and towns. In British Columbia alone it is not only Victoria and Kelowna feeling the heat, but even places like Nelson or the Gulf Islands. The notable exception among Canada's major cities is Montreal, which has a more robust provincial welfare state, much stronger tenant protections and, partly as a result, lower rates of home ownership.</p>
<p>Today, one oil boom-and-bust cycle and a couple years of steady growth later, Canadian monetary policy is tightening again, partly driven by housing market conditions. Despite still moderate wage growth and inflation largely within the Bank of Canada’s target band, Governor Poloz has justified recent interest rate increases in part as a means to cool the housing market. At the same time, Prime Minister Trudeau has made much fanfare of getting Ottawa back into housing, which the government now claims to be a human right. (The UN special rapporteur on the right to housing has <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/un-housing-liberals-1.4720507" target="_blank">questioned</a> whether this implies something legally enforceable or is simply window-dressing.)</p>
<p>The Liberals' National Housing Strategy, unveiled in 2017, promises a $40 billion boost to various housing programs over 10 years, focusing primarily on the most vulnerable. This is a welcome change in tone from government. Unfortunately, the vast majority of these funds are back-loaded until after the next federal election in 2019, and only <a href="http://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/february-2018/good-reviews-mostly-for-the-national-housing-strategy/" target="_blank">$15 billion worth is new money</a>.</p>
<p>In addition, the focus on only housing the vulnerable assumes the market works fine for everyone else. Indeed, much of the new housing money takes the form of various rent and private development subsidies that will not shift the fundamentals of private sector-led, investment-geared housing provision. Without a more concerted effort that looks at all the factors behind our long housing boom and affordability crisis, current plans leave much to be desired.</p>
<p><strong>Housing policy alternatives</strong></p>
<p>The neoliberal state we’ve inherited prides itelf on not interfering with or, god forbid, regulating markets and financial flows except when inaction might be systemically destabilizing. Unfortunately for the government, our housing sector needs patching up—even if it means breaking out the red tape.</p>
<p>The crisis in our cities is so deep and increasingly widespread that far-reaching and systemic change is needed. And really, whether we like it or not, the housing market is already highly regulated: zoning and land use regulations, mortgage rules for buyers, property taxation and pension design all impact what gets supplied and what is demanded. The question is not whether to "interfere" in the fundamental workings of the housing market, but how and in whose interest.</p>
<p>Both Ontario and British Columbia have instituted foreign buyers taxes. B.C. has also implemented a mildly progressive property tax on homes valued over $3 million and increased property transfer tax rates. Vancouver has an empty homes tax starting this year. These measures, which are welcome and contributing to cooling the two most haywire housing markets (Vancouver and Toronto) in terms of both sales and price growth, are nonetheless insufficient to the scale of Canada's post-crisis housing affordability crisis. </p>
<p>Luckily, the alternative policy toolbox is full for those willing to make use of it. Here are some of the sharper implements:</p>
<ul type="disc">
<li><strong>The direct provision of non-market housing.</strong> The public sector should be an aggressive "builder of first resort" that embarks on a massive build-out of high-quality, democratic, non-market housing that the poor, working and middle classes can afford. Direct publicly-provided housing, private non-profit housing, co-ops and community land trusts are all good options. Not only would a rapid build-out eliminate some of the current stigma around social housing, it would directly challenge both the primacy of the market and the prices it currently sets. And it would pay for itself in the long run courtesy of the joint magic of state-backed credit, existing public urban land, and cross-subsidization.</li>
<li><strong>Stronger tenant protections and rent controls</strong>. These measures help people stay in their homes, reduce potential future income streams from land and bring tenancy closer to ownership in terms of stability, security and control.</li>
<li><strong>An end to exclusive zoning in cities.</strong> We can carefully dismantle the system of exclusion that maintains a false scarcity of land and keeps significant portions of our cities off limits to renters and workers. At the same time, we should introduce measures to capture any increases in land values to incumbent owners and redirect that money to the public good.</li>
<li><strong>Reform of the tax system.</strong> Several tax changes would make housing less attractive as an investment relative to other assets and generally increase carrying costs. These include progressive and overall higher property taxes geared toward the taxation of land value at the local level, taxes on capital gains from short-term speculation at the provincial level, and an end to preferential treatment of capital gains at the federal level.</li>
<li><strong>More generous public pensions</strong>. Less pressure on housing as a retirement asset would bring the value of homes and land more in line with their role as places to live.</li>
</ul>
<p>With rising public anger about housing and rent costs, there might still be a window to use some combination of these tools to end our affordability crisis. As a bonus, meaningful housing reform would ensure that our next economic crisis doesn't start among the cranes dotting the Vancouver and Toronto skylines.</p>
<hr />
<p><em>Michal Rozworski is an economist, writer, organizer and CCPA research associate. He podcasts and blogs at </em><a href="http://rozworski.org/political-eh-conomy/" target="_blank">Political Eh-conomy<em>.</em></a></p>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/economy-and-economic-indicators">Economy and economic indicators</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/housing-and-homelessness">Housing and homelessness</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/human-rights">Human rights</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/inequality-and-poverty">Inequality and poverty</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/municipalities-and-urban-development">Municipalities and urban development</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/taxes-and-tax-cuts">Taxes and tax cuts</a></div>
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<div class="field-label">Offices:&nbsp;</div>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/offices/national">National Office</a></div>
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Fri, 26 Oct 2018 15:14:58 +0000Stuart Trew14611 at https://www.policyalternatives.caThe Monitor, November-December 2018https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/monitor-november-december-2018
<div class="field field-name-field-secondary-title field-type-text field-label-hidden">
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<div class="field-item even">Making Finance Work for People</div>
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<div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">November 1, 2018</span></div>
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<p>In Part 2 of our feature on the state of the economy 10 years after the crisis, the <em>Monitor</em> heads to the bank. With radical ideas for reforming finance's retail, mortgage and investing functions from John Anderson, Michal Rozworski, Kevin Young and Alper Yagci, Roxanne Dubois and Brett Scott.</p>
<p>Here's a sample of what you'll find inside this issue:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/are-we-adicted-debt" target="_self"><strong>Are we addicted to debt?</strong></a> Bubble or not, the housing affordability crisis creates systemic risks for the Canadian economy, writes <strong>Michal Rozworski</strong>.</li>
<li><strong><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/why-we-need-postal-banking" target="_self">Why we need a postal bank</a></strong>:<strong> John Anderson</strong> makes the case for public banking and low-cost credit.</li>
<li><strong><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/money-changes-everything" target="_self">Money changes everything</a></strong>: Is art destined to reinforce or resist capitalism? <strong>Roxanne Dubois</strong> reviews Max Haiven's answer to that question in <em>Art After Money, Money After Art</em>.<strong><br /></strong></li>
<li><strong><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/lac-m%C3%A9gantic-plus-%C3%A7a-change" target="_self">What Canada failed to learn from Lac-Mégantic</a></strong>: An excerpt from <strong>Bruce Campbell</strong>'s new book on the deregulatory origins of the disaster and the policy fumbles that have followed in its wake.</li>
</ul>
<p><span>To receive the <em>Monitor</em> at home, </span><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/give">please make a donation to the CCPA</a><span>.</span></p>
<p>Cover illustration by <a href="https://fifteen.ca/" target="_blank">Raymond Biesinger</a>.</p>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/alternative-budgets">Alternative budgets</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/corporations-and-corporate-power">Corporations and corporate power</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/economy-and-economic-indicators">Economy and economic indicators</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/employment-and-labour">Employment and labour</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/gender-equality">Gender equality</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/government-finance">Government finance</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/housing-and-homelessness">Housing and homelessness</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/inequality-and-poverty">Inequality and poverty</a></div>
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/municipalities-and-urban-development">Municipalities and urban development</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/public-services-and-privatization">Public services and privatization</a></div>
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Fri, 26 Oct 2018 15:00:24 +0000Stuart Trew14610 at https://www.policyalternatives.caFast Facts: How to Make a Low Income Bus Pass Workhttps://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/commentary/fast-facts-how-make-low-income-bus-pass-work
<div class="field field-name-field-author-ref field-type-node-reference field-label-above">
<div class="field-label">Author(s):&nbsp;</div>
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even"><a href="/authors/ellen-smirl">Ellen Smirl</a></div>
</div>
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<div class="field field-name-field-release-date field-type-datetime field-label-hidden">
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<div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">October 12, 2018</span></div>
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<div class="field-item even"><p>A year after announcing a 25-cent a trip fare increase, mayoral candidate Brian Bowman has promised to create a low-income transit pass if he is re-elected mayor on October 24<sup>th</sup>. This is great news because waning government support at the provincial level through a funding freeze and the fare increase has led to poor service, unaffordable fares and declining ridership.<a title="" name="_ftnref1" href="#_ftn1" id="_ftnref1">[1]</a></p>
<p>Many low-income Winnipeggers and those in the inner city rely on public transit with no other options. Unaffordable transit means not being able to get to work, yet another added cost to already stretched grocery budgets, get to medical appointment or visit friends and families.</p>
<p>Winnipeg Transit fares are currently structured as a flat fee. This means that people with lower incomes are paying proportionately more of their income on fares. The recent fare increase exceeded the rate of inflation and is much greater than any increases in government income assistance programs or the minimum wage rate.</p>
<p>Individuals living at the Market Basket Measures threshold spend 6.5 per cent of their income on taking transit, however when the cost of transit and housing is combined that figure jumps to 64 per cent. Individuals receiving EIA would have to spend more than they receive in order to afford both housing and a transit pass. This means that many Winnipeggers are making trade-offs between getting where they need to go and having a decent place to live.</p>
<p><strong>Winnipeg transit and housing affordability index</strong></p>
<table style="width: 468px;" border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="81">
<p><strong> </strong></p>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="82">
<p><strong>Annual income (single individual)</strong></p>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="74">
<p><strong>Cost of housing (average price of 1BR)</strong></p>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="74">
<p><strong>Annual Cost of monthly bus pass</strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="71">
<p><strong>Percentage of income spent on transit</strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="86">
<p><strong>Percentage of income spent on housing and transit combined</strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="81">
<p>MBM</p>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="82">
<p>$18,272</p>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="74">
<p>$10,560</p>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="74">
<p>$1,201.2</p>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="71">
<p>6.5%</p>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="86">
<p>64%</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="81">
<p>Employment and Income Assistance (EIA)</p>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="82">
<p>$9,672<a title="" name="_ftnref2" href="#_ftn2" id="_ftnref2">[2]</a></p>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="74">
<p>$10,560<a title="" name="_ftnref3" href="#_ftn3" id="_ftnref3">[3]</a></p>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="74">
<p>$1,201.2</p>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="71">
<p>12%</p>
</td>
<td valign="top" width="86">
<p>121%</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p><em>Source: Authors’ own compilation using data from Statistics Canada 2016 Census of Population and CMHC 2017 average 1Bedroom rental rates for Winnipeg Manitoba ($880 per month)</em></p>
<p>Ensuring that people can afford to take the bus is an important tool in fighting poverty and improving health outcomes. Additionally, ninety per cent of attacks against bus drivers involve fare disputes which demonstrates that a low-income transit pass will not only make fares more accessible to people living on low-income but also make a safer workplace for drivers.</p>
<p>Lessons learned in other jurisdictions have shown that the structure and design of a low-income pass program determines how effective it is at reducing transit poverty.</p>
<p>Determining eligibility matters. Many community agencies have said that their clients have to repeatedly prove their low-income status to qualify for a variety of subsidies and that this continual need to jump through hoops represents major barriers for their clients. The City of Calgary offers the Fair Entry Program, which is a single application process to access multiple programs and services including the low-income bus pass as well as the recreation fee assistance and the low-cost spay and neuter program. We have also heard that some low-income individuals struggle to prove their identity and some municipalities have allowed discretion for community-based organizations (CBOs) that have good relationships with their clients to administer the passes on an honours-based system.</p>
<p>While most low-income programs generally offer a discount of somewhere around 50 per cent many evaluations of these programs found the cost was still too high for many. Calgary offers a sliding scale of $5.15 to $51.50 per month based on income.</p>
<p>Anyone receiving social assistance should receive a pass at no cost because any amount is too much given the present inadequacy of the basic needs allowance for actually meeting basic needs. This should not result in any reductions in benefits that people currently receive. New refugees should also receive a free pass as is offered in Grande Prairie Alberta.</p>
<p>Through conversations in the community we have heard that kids are not going to school because their families cannot afford a bus pass. Low-income families should receive free bus passes for school-aged children. Other options include investigating the viability of a family-pass. Any fare reduction strategies should not be limited to travelling in off-peak hours, nor certain days of the week.</p>
<p>Finally, the specifics of design of the low-income pass should occur in consultation with community-based organizations (CBOs) who serve the targeted population. Low-income individuals themselves should also be consulted to ensure that the pass meets their needs. CBOs should be involved in the planning, implementation and evaluation stages.</p>
<p>Establishing an affordable transit program is only the first step. Addressing transit poverty and its consequences means creating a transit system that is safe, reliable, accessible <em>and</em> affordable. Fare reduction strategies should not come at the expense of any reduction in service. This will require broad-scale transit investment. This means lobbying the province to restore and increase the 50-50 funding for Winnipeg Transit operations. While the Provincial government recently scrapped the provincial Carbon Tax, the federal backstop will still apply and a portion of this should be invested in public transit.</p>
<p>Finally, the City makes choices about where to invest money. Public transit should be treated as a valuable public service in the same vein as libraries, community and recreation centres, and public health. It is time for the City of Winnipeg to demonstrate leadership on transit affordability while simultaneously advocating for better funding from other levels of government.</p>
<p><em>Transit and transportation equity and poverty is the focus of the 2018 State of the Inner City Report. Ellen Smirl is the CCPA MB researcher on this report.</em></p>
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<div class="field-label">Attached Documents:&nbsp;</div>
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<li><a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/Manitoba%20Office/2018/10/How_to_make_an_affordable_bus_pass_work.pdf" class="">How_to_make_an_affordable_bus_pass_work.pdf</a><div class='meta'><span class="filesize">405.19 KB</span></div></li>
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<div class="field-label">Offices:&nbsp;</div>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/offices/manitoba">Manitoba Office</a></div>
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<div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/inequality-and-poverty">Inequality and poverty</a></div>
<div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/municipalities-and-urban-development">Municipalities and urban development</a></div>
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Thu, 11 Oct 2018 21:27:29 +0000Karen Schlichting14591 at https://www.policyalternatives.ca